DRIVING LITTLE MISSY

DRIVING LITTLE MISSY (KÜÇÜK HANIMIN ŞÖFÖRÜ) , 1962

Turkey | HDD, B&W , 104’ |

Director: Nejat Saydam

Cast: Ayhan Işık, Belgin Doruk, Sadri Alışık, Avni Dilligil, Suna Pekuysal, Suphi Kaner, Necdet Tosun

The only apparent common point between Küçük Hanımın Şoförü and Her Şey Çok Güzel Olacak is not the wisp mustaches the posh chums Ayhan Işık and Sadri Alışık support and the one worn by Cem Yılmaz who is obviously emulating them (besides, in between there is Oğuz Aral’s Shameless Man). Underneath, in a bittersweet and amusing way, these two blockbuster comedies of Yeşilçam are about cars.
From the Chevrolet which mischievous rich boy Ayhan Işık buys with his father’s money from a car gallery to the “borrowed for one-time-only drive” Carrera which seduces even rascal Cem Yılmaz’s demure brother Mazhar Alanson, and then to the steady local Renault they use to escape to Bodrum, both films contain Turkish youth aspirations, dreams of making it, fantasies of escape through the metaphor of automobile: “Automobile flies away / Like my heart fleeting away”

For Ayhan Işık, being a good boy and coming to his senses might, at least for a while, go through being a chauffeur to Belgin Doruk, but Cem Yılmaz has no intentions of being a good boy through these kinds of reprimands. The yearnings that the Turkey of the ‘60s urgently passed on to the late Turkey of the ‘90s: The distress of being spirited yet being unable to mobilise, the rebellion against the restrictions of a society that preaches its children to be well-behaved…A desire for mischief, disguise, the need to be someone else. In both films possibility/impossibility of mobilising is identified with manhood. Manhood points to boyishness and boyishness points to arrested development. There’s the idea of class that coyly hangs over it all and a feeling of privilege/privation that aches underneath.
As it says on the back panels of minibus taxis: Thanks to my father! The pains of being/not being a consumer society, what’s permissible/impermissible, having/lack of opportunities which were all passed on from the Turkey of the ‘60s to Özal era and beyond. A long narrow road where labyrinths of liberal economy and the equation of needs and desires get all tangled up…

Fatih Özgüven