Review: Crossing

Director:  Levan Akin

Stars:  Mzia Arabuli, Deniz Dumanli, Lucas Kankava

Speaking incredibly broadly, cinema’s love affair with women tends toward the young and the cishet. Several breakouts of modern Georgian cinema have sought to buck this trend, welcomingly. From starlet director Dea Kulumbegashvili’s enquiry into the religious persecution of a middle-aged woman in her formal stunner Beginning to Elene Naveriani’s consideration of a late-blooming storekeep earlier this year with Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry. The trend we’ve seen arriving on UK shores shares a more mature perspective, both in subject and in the telling.

Levan Akin’s third feature, Crossing, similarly centres an older woman; Mzia Arabuli’s terse retired school teacher Lia. Levan – through contrast – conflates Lia’s sometimes mocked and derided status in society with that of neighbouring Turkey’s thriving sex worker scene; a haven (of sorts) for the region’s trans women. While Lia’s seemingly traditionalist stance plays at odds with the bustling trade on offer in the heady streets of Istanbul, their slow coming together breaks down a set of barriers and provides a sensitive portrait of a city – and culture – in a state of flux.

It all starts out rather inauspiciously. Lia, with a determined stride, arrives unceremoniously at the home of an industrious if slow-witted teenage boy named Achi (Lucas Kankava), who claims to know the whereabouts of her missing trans niece Tekla. These two ill-suited individuals strike up a deal to cross the border and search for Tekla in Istanbul, setting in motion a rather dry odd-couple travelogue which struggles to enamour good faith in a sceptical viewer. Mercifully light on corny comedic asides that might play up the silliness of these two unlikely companions, Levan frames their journey as economically fragile, presenting another kind of margin to exist upon. Neither character cracks open much, however, and it frequently feels as though we’re simply marking time.

Things only start to gel once a third party enters the narrative in an aside we have to remain faithful will tie in with our established concern. Deniz Dumanli lights up the screen as trans activist and soon-to-be lawyer Evrim; a woman protective of the community she’s bloomed within and who might ultimately be able to lead Lia and Achi are searching for. Her arrival coincides with a much-needed second wind, as the middle of Crossing evolves into a balmy pictorial of Istanbul nightlife, where disparate groups gather to communicate falteringly in multiple languages at once. A true melting pot is conjured among the street urchins and roaming cats that dart among the cobbled thoroughfares. Dumanli makes Evrim a wonder; collected, proud, confident and persistent.

While seemingly judgemental of both trans people and sex workers – and certainly of their intersection – Lia herself is not above the prospect of sexual favours to further her quest. A chance encounter with a flush Georgian man at a restaurant has Lia preening before the bathroom mirror, applying lipstick that takes her back to her youth. Her eagerness and urgency, not just to get assistance finding Tekla, but to be seen credibly as a man’s feminine ideal, suddenly draws her closer in our sympathies to the trans women we meet, who seem resigned to sex work as the only feasible role for them in the present cultural framework.

This connection sort of unlocks the picture and Levan’s slow-burn intentions come into focus. The micro becomes the macro. Crossing depicts a society in which systemic patriarchal views have shunned all but the most conformist female presence. Being older is almost as much of a stigma as being trans. Realising this herself, Lia’s approach to her search seems changed. The beginning of the film suggests the two-hander is between Lia and Achi, but it’s really between Lia and Evrim, and the spectre of the missing Tekla. Achi’s main purpose, ultimately, is to bare witness, and to act as an unwitting tour guide for us during a heady aside into the Turkish nightlife.

The finale sees Levan break ranks with the vérité leanings of his piece for a flight of fancy that feels slightly jarring after 90 minutes of documentary-like rigor. It’s a slightly heavy-handed bit of placating sentiment that the picture might’ve been better off without, but its certainly no eleventh hour misstep. He leaves Lia, Evrim and Achi exactly where they need to be, and an earlier shot springs to mind; one of traffic bustling into and out of Istanbul captured in slow zoom-out, emphasising their numbers and increasing smallness against the scale of the city.

Crossing reminds us to zoom back in, and asks us to realign our focus.