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Written and directed by Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan, the melancholic Climates charts the dissolution of a relationship between middle-aged university professor Isa (played by Bilge Ceylan himself) and his considerably younger girlfriend Bahar (the director's real-life wife Ebru Ceylan). Unfolding over the course of three seasons - summer at an Aegean resort, autumn in rainy Istanbul, and winter in a remote, snow-covered region of Eastern Turkey - it's a deeply personal, poignant work.

"Ordinary stories of ordinary people", is how Ceylan describes his cinema, and those who saw the filmmaker's previous study of alienated masculinity Distant will be familiar with the contemplative, pared-down style of Climates. Dialogue is secondary to the high-definition digital video images and the expressive soundtrack, with aural motifs such as dogs barking connecting all three sections.

"DOESN'T ENTIRELY CATCH FIRE"

Ceylan focuses on his characters' faces and gestures and on the silences in their interactions, thus allowing the viewer to fill in the blanks of the slender story. Shot in a continuous take, a rough sex scene between Isa and a former partner Serap (Nasan Kesal), in which the man forces the female into submission, is both disconcerting and farcically amusing. Elsewhere, a beach sequence of Ebru daydreaming that she is being buried alive crystallises her anxieties regarding her and Isa. The emotional estrangement between this couple is conveyed through precise compositions, and their states-of-mind are symbolized by the surrounding landscapes and changing weather conditions. And Ceylan's understated central performance is no flattering self-portrait: his Isa has a wry charm, but he's also a self-pitying and patronizing individual with a cruel streak.

In Turkish, with English subtitles

Climates (Iklimer) is released in UK cinemas on Friday 9th February 2007.