A Georgian woman travels to Turkey with a young neighbour when she hears
her estranged transgender niece has crossed the border.
Review by
Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Levan Akin
Starring: Mzia Arabuli, Lucas Kankava, Deniz Dumanli
The ninth card of the Major Arcana, when dealt upright the Hermit is
commonly understood to represent introspection, a period of necessary
solitude; although deeper, more personal relevance could pertain to
"roguery" and "corruption" (according to A.E. Waite's 'Pictorial Key to
the Tarot'). Depicting an aged male figure, reliant upon a staff and
with his body swaddled in thick robes, the mystical image implies a
journey through unknown territories, the sort you can only begin to
navigate at certain points within your life (when, let's face it, it is
probably far too late anyway). The sky dims as the sad little Hermit
holds a lantern up against the dark in a hopeful attempt at staving it
off (delightfully, some decks have the lantern as a cage for a small
star). The terrain is rocky, treacherous. In Crowley's vividly modernist
pack, Lady Frieda Harris paints the Hermit within a glorious geometric
montage of sharp edges and soft lines, the curled figure all but filling
the tight space of the frame. With the red/green colour pantone of the
Thoth's ninth trump denoting an urgent stop/go dynamic, along with the
fluid curve of the Hermit and including an idiosyncratically
supplemented Cerberus snapping at his heels (a mischievous detail which
positions the Hermit as a rejoinder, or perhaps older version, of the
Fool who naively stepped out into the blissful unknown), Crowley's
version connotes stubborn motion against what may seem to be
insurmountable. However, most renditions of this card (as in the Pamela
Coleman version, my fave illustrator) deliver the Hermit as rigid,
upright: a yardstick standing still as the gloom swells. Such is the
case with a hastily, but pointedly, presented Hermit card in
Levan Akin's road trip drama Crossing, which the occult-eyed may spot upon the cluttered coffee table of a
sex-worker house-share, another stop for stoic, aged protagonist Lia (Mzia Arabuli
- heartbreaking) as she steps slowly through the murk of Istanbul's
unfamiliar subcultures to find her long lost adult niece.
The thing about people who place their destiny in the laid hands of a
pack of cards with mad little drawings on them from hundreds of years
ago is that they are in dire need of direction, a theme which
characterises Crossing when odd couple retired teacher Lia
and Achi (Lucas Kankava), a young man who desires adventure
beyond the confines of their small and depressed Georgian village,
venture across the border to Turkey in order to locate Tekla, a trans
girl who left Batumi years ago in order to escape the prejudice of the
provincial mindset. Meanwhile, in the city, Evrim (Deniz Dumanli)
is a lawyer advocating for the rights of sex workers. My trusty
Stonewall guide informs that LGBTQ+ rights in Turkey are better than
some eastern territories but that "no clear national employment
protections exist," so, along with managing her own transition, Evrim
has her work cut out for her. Akin utilises her as an avatar for the
experience of the marginalised within Istanbul, and she features as an
important aspect of the solidarity this side-lined community enjoys. As
the plot develops, the narratives of both parties will cross, but it is
indicative of this film's languid pace that this happens in no great
rush.
Instead, Akin and cinematographer Lisabi Fridell take time to
build a tactile, deeply realised world via the strikingly captured
destinations the duo pass through. In the airless heat of the opening,
we almost smell the fresh brine of the Black Sea, and in the sooks of
the capital its as if we can reach out and touch the sizzling food and
exotic wares on offer. The spaces in which people live are crucial to
Crossing's meaning: the transexual sex workers are ghettoised within the
crumbling concrete rises of downtown, the nightlife which overwhelms a
gleeful Achi is colourful and insistent; as they explore in vain, we
feel as if we are situated in this vibrant city with Akin and Lia.
As Lia follows up vague links and maybes, it is almost as if Tekla
doesn't want to be found. But perhaps locating her is an irrelevance, as
all indicators suggest that wherever the young woman is now, it is a
more genial and prosperous place than the one she left. It is Lia's own
guilt which she hopes to lose by finding her niece, having had (as a lot
of people probably will over the next few years when they finally
realise that trans people are just as mundane as everyone else, and not
a threat to them or their precariously imagined way of life) a change of
heart that arrived suddenly with the death of her sister (nothing like
death to bring a life sharply back into focus, is there?). At the start
of the film, Akin well-meaningly discusses the menopause with
insensitive ignorance, while Lia, about to be plunged unceremoniously
into the world of trans sex work, tut-tuts some young girls singing on
the bus. Will they both learn and grow, you wonder? As ever, the
emotional truth is not in the inevitable when, but the carefully
delivered how. In Crossing's ingenious and moving denouement, Lia has transformed from a rigid
okhutsi kali to a person capable of change and acceptance, at one with
the flowing mosaic world she finds herself within.
Crossing is on MUBI UK and UK/ROI VOD now.
