Summary
A True Gentleman uses the skeleton of a typical rom-com to craft a character drama that isn’t especially romantic or funny, but it’s more interesting questions about transactional relationships and existential crises aren’t adequately explored.
I worry that some people might go into A True Gentleman incorrectly assuming it’s a rom-com, which would be a mistake since it isn’t funny at all. To be fair, it isn’t especially romantic either. The Turkish Netflix movie is a largely uncomfortable exploration of transactional relationships, lingering trauma, and existential crises. Fun!
You’ll recognize Cagatay Ulusoy immediately if you’ve been keeping on top of your Turkish TV over the last few years, though he’s playing a very different role here than the wannabe messiah he plays in Kubra. In this film, he’s Saygin, a gigolo who wins over his high-priced clientele by acting like the perfect gentleman and indulging their every whim.
This is a lucrative market, but it’s not great for one’s love life. Saygin hasn’t cared about this too much, but a chance meeting with a woman named Nehir (Ebru Sahin) changes that. All of a sudden, Saygin is reevaluating his life at quite a pace, trying to figure out the best time to drop the news that he’s essentially a well-put-together prostitute.
It might constitute a mild spoiler alert, but it turns out there isn’t a good time to reveal this. And that would be true at the best of times, but Nehir – rather implausibly unbeknown to everyone except the audience – is the best friend of the daughter of Saygin’s most exclusive client, Serap (Senay Gurler). You can see where this is going.
There’s a streak of classicism to A True Gentleman. Saygin comes from nothing, but he doesn’t move through high society like an imposter. He’s a debonair type who fits right in because the façade he has cultivated is so well-oiled, but we’re reminded of his roots all the time, most frequently in the form of his friend, Kado, who’s a much less refined version of himself.
Turkish film and TV is prone to exaggerating its emotional contours, and that’s true here, so a lot of the film ends up being a bit ridiculous. But I think its heart is in the right place. It builds on the skeleton of an archetypal rom-com to plumb the depths of a charming seducer who might be too far gone to be saved. It doesn’t have that typical rom-com catharsis of the lead getting his own way. Lying about who you are, who you’re with, and what you’re doing all the time isn’t hand-waved away as something you can stop doing without consequences.
This lends an age-old format a touch of rawer human drama, but on the downside it makes A True Gentleman a little bleak. Part of the fun of a rom-com is that predictability. You root for the relationship. Here, you’re not sure whether you even should be rooting for the relationship. It’s more interesting but less enjoyable.
I don’t want to oversell things, though. A True Gentleman isn’t that interesting. This is partly a consequence of sex work having been explored as a subject in a similar way before, but it’s also because the drama is so heavy-handed it can feel ungainly. The film feels somehow too much but not quite enough. I’m not sure I left it knowing any more about Saygin than I interpreted in the first five minutes.
The cast is game for it, though. Turkish productions tend to cast outrageously attractive actors in lead roles, and that’s very much the case here, but at least it makes sense in context. You can totally understand what women would see in Saygin, and similarly get why he’d be willing to risk it all for Nehir five minutes after meeting her. But in a film that aims for more depth and nuance, that reliance on superficiality does too much heavy lifting. It gives the script too many excuses to leave elements underexplored.
I’m not sure what kind of conclusion this amounts to. The leads of a romantic drama being too good-looking barely constitutes a cogent point, but that’s genuinely how it feels sometimes. The abandonment of the classic rom-com structure in favor of a more nuanced character drama is a worthwhile effort without enough commitment to arrive at a meaningful ending, which is perhaps why the climax feels a bit like the film deciding to be a more traditional experience after all.
I think I’d cautiously recommend A True Gentleman, though. Like a lot of Turkish output it’s genuinely interesting, has some good – if overblown – performances, and it’s nice to look at in more ways than one. That will certainly do for most viewers, but for those hoping the film pays off some of its better ideas, maybe lower your expectations.
