A rom-com with terminal illness? It sounds strange, but A Safe Place (In Good Hands, Sen Yasamaya Bak) manages to get the rabbit out of the galley with a structure that relies on the main characters. This Turkish production, which rises in the ranking of Netflix, is reminiscent of Life in a Year, but in reality it seems to align more among recent film hits in that country, such as My Father's Violin.
The bad news has been known from the beginning: Melisa (Asli Enver) presents herself as a happy and crazy girl who has just been diagnosed with a terminal illness. She has a young son, Can (Mert Ege Ak), who is lively and spoiled, who doesn't go to kindergarten because she doesn't want to and who accompanies her to her job as a waitress because they are very close. The doctor's words blow up her perfect structure of a single mother: after five months, when her time runs out, what will become of the child?
Hakan Bonomo's script causes Melisa to reject the offer of her best friend, Fatos (Ezgi Senler), who works with her, to take care of her son after his death. Fatos then insists on dating apps: how about a father for Can?
The plan will surely displease the boy, who feels very comfortable as the only man in his mother's life, but no one informs him, just as no one tells him about the gloomy future that awaits him soon. The boy, however, is perceptive enough to set fire to the tablecloth on the table where Melisa eats with Firat (Kaan Urgancıoğlu), a seductive and rude businessman.
They met — although about this the plot is kept a twist towards the end — in a cafeteria, when Firat, behind Melisa and Can in line, was impatient and rude, more young than the child. Soon after, Melisa saw him again, on the cover of a magazine: he is a kind of bicycle tycoon. Suddenly that man, who called Can “little monster”, crosses his life in different ways.
Melisa goes to look for him at a night club, where mutual displeasure leads them to a vodka shot competition. The night ends at a pier in Istanbul, with a more civilized conversation than the one in the cafeteria. Although — to emphasize the part that follows rom in the genre — he asks her at one point: “What? Are you dying?”
The unlikely trio is getting together — Can breaks a shop window and Firat must help him flee; when the boy adopts a dog he names him Firat — as time passes. The direction of Ketche (known for the series Teskilat and Sampiyon, as well as the film Muslum) emphasizes the density of the characters, which not only allows the audience to identify with a lot of what each one of them feels, but also the plot has absurd and charming moments such as the obsession of Can for accumulating toilet paper.
From the box office Love Story it is known that love stories with announced death have their followers, and A Safe Place does not disappoint them. But it also adds a strong dose of humor, which brings radiance to the tragedy and imitates the bittersweet of real life.
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