REVIEWED - CLIMATES/IKLIMLER:THE title of this Turkish drama is ambiguous in that it charts the seasons from the heat of summer to the heavy snows of winter, and the shifting relationship between a couple that turns glacial in sunshine and seeks a renewal of warmth as the temperature drops.

Its writer, producer, director and editor is Nuri Bilge Ceylan, whose previous film, Distant (Uzak) took two principal prizes at the Cannes Film Festival in 2003. Ceylan stretches himself further in Climates, taking on the leading role of Isa, a quite smugly self-absorbed university lecturer involved with a younger woman, a TV production designer played by the director's off-screen wife, Ebru Ceylan. On a summer holiday in Kas that disintegrates into nagging and sniping, the historical ruins they explore serve as a metaphor for their own crumbling relationship.

Climates is as minimalist and sombre as Distant, and it recalls Ceylan's formal style in that film - long takes from fixed camera positions, precisely framed landscape compositions, measured pacing and pregnant pauses - as the couple drift apart.

Back in rainy Istanbul, after Isa meets another couple, he turns up at the home of the woman in that other relationship. His teasing abruptly turns disturbingly serious while a thunderstorm rages outside.

Ceylan immerses himself in the unsympathetic role of a man quite content to lie through his teeth to get the woman he wants. His character suffers from - and is himself - a pain the neck. Ebru Ceylan has minimal dialogue, but her silences are as eloquent as her copious tears seem to be real in this accomplished low-key, observational drama achieved with a striking visual style.