A True Gentleman
ザ・ジェントルマン
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
A gigolo accepts a rich client's offer of a flat, a car and exclusivity, then falls for a young singer who turns out to be her daughter's best friend.
Saygın, a gigolo, explains in voice-over that being a true gentleman in his trade means becoming whatever each woman needs while keeping himself out of it. His oldest friend, Kado, who tried and failed to save Saygın's mother from the fire that killed her when Saygın was young, works the same trade with less success. At a party Saygın meets Nehir, a student who sings, and leaves her waiting when his wealthy, unhappily married client, Serap, makes him an offer: a flat, a car and anything he wants, if he sleeps with no one else. He accepts, and moves Kado into the flat.
Serap worries that her daughter, Fulya, feels plain beside her beautiful best friend, and Saygın sends Kado to charm her at her birthday party. The best friend is Nehir. Saygın cannot stay away from her. After a fire at her dormitory he takes her home and tells her about his mother, and they become lovers, while he keeps Serap, who has learned she may have cervical cancer, beside him and in the dark. Kado, who depends on performance pills and on clients who abuse him, is ordered to stop seeing Fulya, and tells Saygın that a man who loves one woman while taking another's money is a whore.
Serap learns from Fulya whom Nehir is seeing and orders Saygın to leave the girl alone. Asked to hold Serap one last time, he is lying beside her when Nehir walks in, and she understands what he is. The next morning Saygın finds Kado dead from the pills he had come to rely on.
Three years later Saygın runs his own restaurant. A band comes in late one night; Nehir is among them, singing her own songs now instead of covers. She invites him to her first show, and he says he will be there.
Starring
Çağatay Ulusoyas Saygın
A charming gigolo from a poor background who becomes whatever his wealthy clients want.
Saygın’s story
Saygın grew up poor and lost his mother to a fire when he was young; now he is a sought-after gigolo who says a true gentleman becomes whatever a woman needs and keeps himself out of it. Meeting Nehir at a party, he stands her up to accept Serap's offer of a flat, a car and exclusivity. He cannot stay away from Nehir, and becomes her lover while still living on Serap's money, hiding each woman from the other. When Nehir finds him lying beside Serap and learns what he is, he loses her, and the next morning he loses Kado to the pills. Three years later he runs his own restaurant, and when Nehir walks in with her band and invites him to her first show, he says he will be there.
Ebru Şahinas Nehir
A student who sings, the best friend of his client's daughter, who falls for Saygın without knowing what he does.
Nehir’s story
Nehir is a student with a voice, the beautiful best friend who makes Serap's daughter, Fulya, feel plain. She meets Saygın at a party and is left waiting; at Fulya's birthday he apologises, and she follows him out when he tries to leave. She asks him to stay with her one drunken night, runs to him when her dormitory catches fire, and becomes his lover, though he keeps disappearing on her. Going to his flat to settle things, she finds him lying beside Serap, her friend's mother, and realises he is a gigolo. She watches him grieve for Kado from a distance and leaves him alone. Three years later she sings her own songs with a band, finds him at his restaurant and invites him to her first show.
Şenay Gürleras Serap
A wealthy, unhappily married client who pays for Saygın's flat and car in return for having him to herself.
Haki Biçicias Kadir (Kado)
Saygın's oldest friend and near-brother, an escort who relies on pills to keep up with his work.
Nazlı Bulumas Fulya
Serap's daughter, who feels plain beside her best friend, Nehir, and is charmed by Kado.
Why it matters
A True Gentleman takes an old premise, a young man who sells his company to wealthy women, and turns it from romantic comedy into grief. Its subject is what a transaction does to intimacy when both sides pretend it is not one: Serap pays for exclusivity and calls it love; Saygın calls his performance gentlemanliness; Nehir falls for a man whose home and car are paid for by her friend's mother. The film also counts what the trade costs the men in it, through Kado, who ages in a job that rewards youth and keeps going on pills, and it allows the women who pay a loneliness of their own, above all Serap, unhappily married and facing illness. What it does not settle is whether Saygın can be loved as himself once the role is gone; its last scene only offers him the chance to find out.