Romantic Comedy (Romantik Komedi)

Romantic Comedy (Romantik Komedi)

Movie · 2010 · 10 people

Ketche directed the Turkish romantic comedy Romantik Komedi (Romantic Comedy) for the production company Boyut Film. Released across Turkey on February 5, 2010, the 113-minute picture went on to rank among the year's biggest Turkish box-office earners. Named after its genre, it stresses the place of love and friendship in life and takes a playful look at relations between the sexes. Ceren Aslan and Aslı Zengin wrote the screenplay.

The story centres on three close friends, strong women living in a big city: Esra, Didem and Zeynep. Zeynep is about to marry, and her wedding promises surprises. Esra, who has worked for years in a job she did not want, resigns, ends a troubled relationship and starts at an advertising agency. As she grows closer to the agency's creative director Mert, Didem is drawn to Mert's friend, the actor Cem Sezgin. Their choices will change their lives. The cast includes Sedef Avcı, Sinem Kobal, Cemal Hünal, Engin Altan Düzyatan, Begüm Kütük, with Janset as Suzan.

Boyut Film had made its name at the box office with Mahsun Kırmızıgül's films and here tried a genre with few recent Turkish successes. One review said the makers leaned on the American formula and took Sex and the City as their model.

DirectorKetche
Production companyBoyut Film

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Through different eyes

Cinephile Looks at script, editing and directing choices; keeps a distance from formula films.

By naming itself after its genre, Ketche's film makes a statement of intent, and it does follow the rules to the letter: three very close women, a wedding full of surprises, a heroine who quits her job for a new life, a romance sparked at an advertising agency. As one critic noted, its reliance on the American formula, Sex and the City in particular, is both its strength and its weakness; the storytelling is tidy and glossy, but the characters never quite acquire a texture that belongs to their own city. Across 113 minutes it tries to balance three storylines, yet some interludes feel like filler. The chemistry among the cast keeps it standing. A competent but timid attempt to fill the genre's gap in Turkey.

History & Society Lens Asks about the period, the social background and what the work reflects.

The film centres on three women in the big city who shape their careers and relationships through their own decisions. Esra quitting the job she never wanted and ending a relationship that was going badly is a small but telling sign of how urban working women were starting to be portrayed in mainstream cinema. This world, where friendship matters as much as family, offers a slice of big-city life at the time. Still, the life on show belongs to a comfortable part of the city; class differences and everyday hardships stay in the background. Its place among the highest-grossing Turkish films of 2010 shows the audience's appetite for such urban stories.

Yeşilçam Nostalgic A viewer raised on the classics, looking for warm storytelling and strong acting.

In Yeşilçam's romantic comedies, love blossomed in the warmth of the neighbourhood and the family; here instead we get advertising agencies, wedding jitters and the rush of city life. The three friends' loyalty to one another warmed my heart, and it is nice that the film weighs love and friendship on the same scale. But the story felt to me as if it came out of an all too familiar foreign mould; I searched the characters' speech and manner for something of our own and found little. Hoping for a song that lingers or a scene that touches the heart, you mostly have to settle for a glossy surface.

These are not reader reviews: they are short editorial takes written from different viewer perspectives with AI assistance. Reader reviews are below.

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