Review of Chasing the Wind / Rüzgara Bırak, directed by Engin Erden

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

This is one of those interesting blog posts for me because of the fact I’ve fallen so far behind in my writing practice, in watching movies, and keeping up with my reading. For the longest time I was unemployed—but still working freelance and as a contract worker—which meant that while I was covering my bills, I was not really saving as much as I wanted to.

That said, when I got a full-time job as of late, at the time of typing this, I suddenly found the reality of working in-person jarring in the sense I couldn’t watch as much as I wanted. I always tell myself that I want to watch as many movies and read as many books as possible before my time is up, and I am trying my hardest to reach that goal.

I started watching this movie specifically when I was on a flight back from Istanbul. I was on Turkish Airlines and was happy to see the sheer amount of Turkish language content I had access to while on the flight. I did get through some other Turkish content, as seen on the blog, but I started Chasing the Wind and promptly fell asleep for a bit.

Then we landed and I was sad I couldn’t watch this movie past the first ten minutes or so. Lo and behold I was shocked to see this movie pop up on my Netflix account one day when I was looking up what kind of Turkish shows and movies they offered.

So I watched it all the way through when I had a free weekend! This isn’t too much of a time sink, although you might not like the way this movie goes at time.

Let’s get into the review!

A focused city girl dedicated to her career finds her opposite in a boy who’d rather surf and live a simple life.

Our female lead in this movie is Asli, who, at the beginning of the movie, we see in her element. She’s living in a big city, working at a large Turkish company, and very dedicated to the company and her career. She’s an heir there and potentially someone to look out for in the future, especially considering how influential she can be.

Things are about to change for her when she’s sent out to find another heir for the company: Ege. She goes out to the seaside and while she works at a restaurant, she accidentally meets Ege. The two of them seem to be opposites from the beginning, as she’s tight knit about she eats and works at the table.

Ege, on the other hand, is more laidback and works at the restaurant just because he can. However, when a man gets aggressive with Asli, he steps in and helps her in her time of need. She appreciates that a lot, and the two start seeing each other in a different light.

It’s not long after that though they realize who the other person is. The main storyline of the movie is about how Asli learns more about his life and how he lives quite peacefully here, and if she goes through with her goal of getting him to agree to something he fundamentally disagrees with, then it’s going to disrupt the larger community at hand.

There’s also an undeniable attraction between these two. Whether it’s Asli learning how to surf or the long glances they share with each other, we know from the beginning this is a romance movie and that it’s not going to potentially end with them never seeing each other.

Things also are going to get a little tense when Ege finds out the real reason why Asli is there, adding friction and a rift that might be something they can’t fix. Lots of drama to come in this movie, despite the short running time, which adds some much needed momentum for something that can come across as a little dull at times.

Overall Thoughts

As a movie I thought this was fairly entertaining, but it was lacking in several different aspects. I thought that the synopsis could be really interesting, especially as someone who watches a lot of soap operas and dramas from around the world, but the conflict and driving force between these two meeting left more to be desired for me.

I also thought they didn’t have a lot of chemistry, but that’s just me. I think someone else might disagree, but I thought that the chemistry was lacking—it might be because of the fact I thought the romance and how they’re getting together wasn’t that cute or convincing. The dialogue also did not help.

That said, I could see someone really liking this movie, but it wasn’t for me. I suggest it if you like a quick romance or something to watch on a Friday night that doesn’t require a lot of commitment. It’s a different kind of movie than what I usually watch, which is okay, but I wanted more from it.

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