Nihat, a middle-aged cook’s assistant, has a social life as habit-ridden as his professional life. The evening outings with his colleagues are barely enough to drag him out of his old bachelor’s stay-at-home torpor. Yet everyone insists that a colleague, whose husband is rotting in prison, is making eyes at him…
Opening with a shot bordering on fantasy, this circular story unfolds in a series of small shifts that transform indifference into desire, a self-image into the image of another. The mise en scène bears the mark of the filmmaker’s three facets, as he is also painter and novelist: the composition of a shot builds up over time, just as Nihat, who seemingly lets life go by without taking any initiative, passes from one identity to another in line with the expectations and projections of his entourage. While I am Not Him never slips into the codes of a thriller, it diffuses a nagging worry around what the other’s look can bring into existence socially. Commonplace objects – a pile of potatoes to be peeled, a pair of slippers at the foot of a bed, a patterned swimsuit – silently suggest the latent danger of people becoming objectified by their own doing.
C.G.
