Last Updated on July 21, 2024 by
In the small Georgian Black Sea Coast town of Batumi, a retired school teacher, Lia (Mzia Arabuli), appears at the doorstep of a former pupil, Zaza (Levan Bochorishvili), who is currently berating his younger brother Achi (Lucas Kankava) for taking his car without his permission. This is not the first time the siblings have argued over such trivialities. Although they continue arguing momentarily, they stop long enough to invite Lia in for tea when she tells them that she’s in search of her niece Tekla since her mother has recently died.
Zaza says that she does not know Tekla, but Achi recalls that she was one of the trans girls who used to live in the neighborhood before they were evicted from their home. Lia is followed by Achi, who reveals that he knew Tekla and tells her his address in Istanbul, where she is currently living with friends. Saying that he knows a little bit of Turkish, that he knows English from YouTube, and that he needs to escape from his brother, he manages to convince Lia to take him with her.
Lia has curly black hair and a mole beneath her nose, and she always looks severe, as if she does not allow others to mess with her; to the younger Achi, Lia would turn out to be an irritating figure. An abbreviated visit to Lia’s house reveals that she had stayed there to take care of her sick sister. After picking some tomatoes and cucumbers from the neighbor’s garden and in the morning receiving a hospitality gift of pelamushi from them, Lia and Achi enter Turkey; he has never been there, and Lia has visited only once when she was younger.
“It was alright,” she says about Istanbul in her penchant for no-nonsense language. During their subsequent bus trip, Achi unthinkingly gobbles up the churchkhela, which goes round and round the bus. Next, he vomits through the window—an obvious example of the hero’s impuissance. Sitting on the bus and noticing the seductive posture of a woman, Lia comments that Georgian women have no shame anymore. This tells us that Lia is a conservative with a skewed view of how the world is and is entering, yet Crossing is not interested in being a simple admonishment. After they arrive in Turkey, the two take a ferry: Director Akin’s camera sensuously traces the ferry’s stairwells and contemplates both the passengers and the staff of the vessel with the same ease and friendliness it has shown its two leading characters.
Others, as it happens, are Evrim (Deniz Dumanli), a trans lawyer who emerges from the same ship as the protagonist and goes to meet a friend to discuss their latest boyfriend, as well as voluntary work at an NGO for sexual minorities. Getting an official female ID is a process that Evrim is going through, and how a doctor does not look at her during an office visit is one of the examples of discrimination she faces in her everyday life while being kind to him and complimenting his hair on her way out is how she accepts it. Lia and Evrim are destined to meet in Crossing. Still, it takes Akin’s script a long while to embrace this plot de rigueur because the film is more interested in going along with the aunt and Achi through traffic-crossing boulevards, climbing lots of stairs, and descending steep alleyways.
In every scene, there is an attempt to tell something about the character’s state of mind, emotions, and background from their body language or verbal communication. This is just as true for the interactions Lia has with a Georgian man who makes her come out of her shell for all of five minutes and fail disastrously at flirting, or the budding romance between Evrim and a taxi driver, or when Lia meets three Turkish trans women none of whom can understand a word this Lia is saying and vice versa but the result of a conversation that one of the girls starts singing a sad song. The soundtrack of Akin is replete with similar sorrow songs, which capture the regrets, sorrows, and yearnings of these characters.
Although Arabuli starts staking out his show strictly in a grim manner, the actress succeeds in revealing the set of feelings that keep Lia on her heels and dedicated to the mission. Her anger, despair, disgust, and self-recrimination, in large part, are credible because they are seldom voiced and are not easily rationalized. Lia feels something more than one about Tekla’s decisions, as well as her contribution to forcing her niece to get here, and the inventive portrayal of life’s messiness enhances the film’s compassion for her circumstances.
The same can also be said about Achi and Evrim, who are also struggling with themes of rejection, belongingness, and longing for affection. Crossing manages these dynamics with extraordinary skill so that even Lia and Achi’s embodiment of a mother-child relationship does not feel contrived but rather organic and an extension of their emerging friendship/experience. When Lia is asked what she will do with Tekla when she finds her, Lia replies that she has no future and, therefore, no plan; “I am just here until I am not here. ” But if she sounds out of place, she is not without hope for redemption and forgiveness and relief. Crossing does not moralize its protagonists but understands them inclusively as multifaceted, whose contradictions are the essence of character development and hope.
Not only that, but it is so delicate and warm that one cannot pray for those who are lost in this show. The film that Akin made is about lost and strange individuals who have not given up the desire to repair themselves and the chaos they had created or been given, and the film is as charming as it is forgiving.
Crossing provides few clear endings but, in a significant way, leaves Lia to fulfill the final part of her journey. Akin doesn’t probe deeper into the psyche of his main character; all he realizes or states is that the journey to wholeness is a process that starts with self and is catalyzed by those people one lets into one’s life and heart.
Crossing 2024 Parents Guide Age Rating
Crossing 2024 is not rated because it has not undergone the official rating process by the Motion Picture Rating (MPA).
Language: The feeding scale on mild to moderate language is used occasionally.
Violence: Thus, no violent scenes are depicted in the plot of the movie, at least none that would leave a strong imprint on the reader’s mind.
Sexual Content: A form of a code that makes a certain degree of reference to sexuality, for instance, women cozily posed. There are some issues of Gender identity and trans in the themes. There is also a developing trans sexual relationship between the main character, Evrim, a trans lawyer, and a taxi driver.
Substance Use: None of the above is mentioned in the basic plot of the story.
Crossing is a versatile film about people and relationships, and it attempts to introduce acute topics like the orientation of gender and the role of family members. There is no fighting or swearing, but it is psychologically dramatic and deals with such topics as being transgender.
Another thing that parents should know is that the movie contains conversations about sexual and gender minorities, which results in children’s questions.
This type of humor, as well as most of the content of the movie, is perfectly suitable for a mature audience as much of the events and characters’ actions are shown subtly, and some of them deal with subjects that may not be quite appropriate for the young audience.
