Gary W. Tooze / DVD Beaver
Yumurta
(aka 'Egg')

In the first installment of director Semih Kaplanoglu's award-winning trilogy, emotionally distant poet Yusuf returns home to settle his late mother's affairs. A young girl who’s a distant relative, awaits him in the crumbling house. Yusuf has been unaware of her existence and is surprised to find that she’s been living with his mother for the past five years. Yusuf is now obliged to perform a sacrifice which had been his mother’s dying wish.

Yumutra is the first film of the 'Yusuf Trilogy' which comprises, Yumutra (Egg), Sut (Milk) and Bal (Honey) as available on DVD from Olive Films. These are simple, touching humanist dramas. They focus on social and economic changes in the Anatolian provinces of Eastern Turkey dealing primarily with the dynamics of complex mother-son relationships through the protagonist.

As most Olive film releases have been to a capable standard to-date, unfortunately this first leg of the trilogy seems to break all our rules of transfer adeptness. It is non-anamorphic and moderately hazy in spots - interlaced (see combing example at last capture), shows rounded corners throughout the majority of the film and the subtitles are burned-in. The dual-layering of the disc doesn't overcome the limited detail of the letterboxed 1.85:1 image. Compounding this the frame is slightly askew. We can only assume that the available source prompted these limitations. We find it unfortunate.

Audio is clear and consistent and the subtitles seem competent, but there are no extras at all on the region 1 NTSC disc.

Of the three - I found Yumutra to be a good film but the least compelling of the trilogy and the price and poor transfer make for a limited recommendation. It would have seemed more prudent to offer the entire trilogy in one, more reasonably priced, boxset - or at least have that as an option as more of an enticement to purchasers.