‘Museum of Innocence’: A not-so-innocent love story

The nine-episode story — an adaptation from a book of the same title by Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk — is set in the mid-‘70s and begins with Selahattin Pasali’s character Kemal, engaged to Sibel (Oya Unustasi). Both are young (30-ish), attractive, sophisticated urbanites from wealthy Istanbul families. In short, a match made in heaven. But that perfect setup is about to be upended when Kamal meets 18-year-old shopgirl Fusun (Eylul Lize Kandamir), a long-lost poorer relation (his cousin), whilst shopping for a gift for his fiancée. She has blossomed into a lovely young lady, a fact not lost on Kamal, who was instantly attracted to her. Kamal thus contrived a plan to lure Fusun into an apartment owned by Kamal’s mother. There, he goes on to seduce her, with a lie that Kamal hardly makes love to Sibel even though they were about to be wed. In short order, Kamal and Fusun fall madly in love and start having frequent trysts in his mother’s pad.

But what to do with that small matter of Kamal’s impending wedding? Kamal thought he had the perfect solution: telling Fusun emphatically that “no one can come between us,” he boldly plans to keep Fusun as a mistress after marrying Sibel; “I can have it all,” he tells himself in a voice-over, “having a good married life while continuing an affair with an alluring young woman.” Audaciously, he invites Fusun and his family to his engagement party (they are relatives, after all). Fusun comes, stealing the thunder from the soon-to-be bride in a fetching formal dress. But then, alas, listening to gossip at the party, Fusun finds out the truth: that while having regular lovemaking sessions with her, Kamal was being intimate with Sibel every night as well. Leaving the event in tears, Fusun cast one piercingly bitter look at Kamal and was gone.

As in gone for good. The day after, Kamal was unable to find her. It was then that he realized that he was in love with her with such passion that he could not function without her. He searched for her everywhere in vain, becoming so despondent that he abandoned his home, his family’s business and even broke off his engagement with Sibel.

In her absence, he finds comfort in the little things Fusun had touched while they were together: cigarette butts, a teacup, earrings left behind, the cover of a face powder container. All these items he kept neatly arranged, as a museum would, in his mother’s apartment, the scene of their affair.

The nine-episode story, ‘Museum of Innocence,’ is an adaptation from a book of the same title by Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk. It is set in the mid-‘70s and begins with Selahattin Pasali’s character Kemal, engaged to Sibel (Oya Unustasi). Both are young, attractive, sophisticated urbanites from wealthy Istanbul families. But that perfect setup is about to be upended when Kamal meets 18-year-old shopgirl Fusun (Eylul Lize Kandamir), a long-lost poorer relation (his cousin), whilst shopping for a gift for his fiancée. 

He does find her, after nine years, but married to a ne’er-do-well aspiring screenwriter. Also, she has evolved, from the innocent lass whose virginity he took, to a resentful and discontented would-be actress.

The rest of the series is all about his Herculean efforts to win Fusun back, leading to sordid situations and tragic consequences, just when Kamal thought he had gotten what he had pined for all those years.

“Museum of Innocence” is a troubled and twisted tale of obsession, selfish desires, of paradise lost and the high price of trying to take it back. Pasali’s reading of Kamal as a conflicted, complicated anti-hero whose humongous conceit of wanting to have it all — a socially-acceptable family and, at the same time, a poor shopgirl for a lover — results in the ruination of many a life, is most consummate.

Kandamir is also fantastic as Fusun; achingly beautiful, she really comes across as someone a man can become insanely obsessed with. The emotions she expresses — deep love, extravagant expectation and deep disappointment, and her transmogrification from naïve teen to manipulative woman, are also a tour de force, done quietly but powerfully.

Impossible to ignore is the painstaking production design that takes us back to mid-1970s Istanbul, and every shot has a mise en scéne so richly layered, not only in period detail, but in symbolisms, that it sometimes takes repeated watchings to comprehend them. Matched with gorgeous cinematography and heavy, angst-ridden dialogue, it draws you into its world the same way that people are drawn as spectators to a fatal car accident.

It is not an easy series to watch. It is painful, emotionally draining, with acting that takes us in and makes us feel the torment of the two protagonists. The nine parts burn slowly, but all the better to make us feel the agonizing feeling of frustration and agony of a man deprived of the center of his universe and finding her again a very different person.

It is a tortured, gut-wrenching, depraved, not-so-innocent love story that gives us more than a glimpse of the darkest side of love. Watch it only if you dare.

“Museum of Innocence” is now streaming on Netflix. — Ferdinand S. Topacio