The Turkish social drama Love Me Instead aka Beni Çok Sev is now streaming on Netflix. The director of Miracle in Cell No:7 aka Yedinci Koğuştaki Mucize, Mehmet Ada Öztekin returns with another brilliant piece of cinema. The cast for the film includes Songül Öden, Aleyna Özgeçen, Füsun Demirel, Sarp Akkaya, Doğukan Polat, Ali Seçkiner Alici, Ercan Kesal, Sinan Arslan, and Ushan Çakır. The film has a runtime of two hours with audio and subtitles present in both English and Turkish (original).
– Netflix’s Love Me Instead review does not contain spoilers –
Love Me Instead: Opening Past Doors
The film opens with a nod to the True Detective style of interview, where we find prison guard Sedat seated in front of a camera as the interviewers get a detailed note on the incident that happen with the prisoner Sedat was an escort of, Musa. Revealed in flashbacks, we delve into the story of a father’s journey to revenge and redemption.
After 14 years in prison, Musa finds himself blessed with a day out on parole to visit his daughter, Yonca who he hasn’t seen or heard from during the years he spent locked up behind the bars. However, he will be supervised by a prison guard from Konya, Sedat during this visit. On meeting his mother, the woman he loves and his estranged daughter things start to warm up as relationships are revisited and reflected upon. Yet what might simply look like a tale of a father’s chance to rebuild his relationship with his daughter, it is much more than what meets the eyes.
Image Credit: Still from Love Me Instead, now streaming on Netflix
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As the day gets over and Musa nears the time to head back to prison, he is revisited by the ghosts of the past that haunt him with a truth that completely shatters him. Thus, putting him on a path where he chases the darkness away from his life for once and for all.
A story wrapped in the cloak of crime and drama, Love Me Instead addresses all the relevant and important topics in society starting from the urge and intention that gives rise to criminal behaviour to the shattering of human emotions and demons that drives someone towards good and bad. The social drama also shows us the dirt of the illegal world painted in money, drugs and prostitution.
Image Credit: Still from Love Me Instead, now streaming on Netflix 
Image Credit: Still from Love Me Instead, now streaming on Netflix
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The ambitious film is led by a stellar cast who deliver the best performance possible along with the cinematography that tells you more about the story than the dialogues themselves. A significantly brilliant scene in the film is the moment of climax when Musa finds out the truth about his daughter from his mother at the brisk dawn covered with a gloomy sky. The duality of the scene showing night and light together only reflects more on what kind of internal theme all the characters are associated with.
Love Me Instead: Final Verdict
Overall, the film is beautifully crafted and leaves a profound impression. It touches your soul and breaks your heart all the same time. Netflix’s Love Me Instead truly deserves to be seen and appreciated on a global level.
Image Credit: Still from Love Me Instead, now streaming on Netflix
You can watch the Turkish film Love Me Instead aka Beni Çok Sev, streaming now on Netflix.
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I’m ashamed to admit that I cannot quite wrap my arms around the ending? Am I to understand that the prison guard and the mother of the dead daughter somehow planned all of this, so that the prison guard would get his pension? Wouldn’t he get his pension regardless of whether he escorted Musa or not? The prison guard’s voiceover explanation at the end of the film has confused me?
Who was the pretend daughter, was she Marees daughter