A Wife for Hire

Wife for Hire, or Borrowed Bride as the official English title of the Turkish film Egreti Gelin names it, is a woman who is hired by rich families to teach their adolescent sons the ways of marriage. Even though a borrowed bride is commonly considered as a prostitute, the hypocritical society treats her as if she is somehow a respectful teacher as long as she is hired.

The story takes place in a not-so-big Denizli City, at the very first years of Turkish Republic, when this tradition has already started to disappear, as we understand from the dialogues. Honestly speaking, I have never heard such kind of a tradition before watching this film, so I am not very sure if it has gone away or still being practiced. I tend to think it is not practiced anymore but I am totally convinced that this was what people had been doing at the time.

Ali is the son of the mayor of this city and his parents are pretty much worried about him because he refuses to behave as he is supposed to behave. His mother is even more worried because she mistakenly thinks that his son is still playing with dolls at the age of 18. It pretty soon turns out that it is not a doll but a puppet and Ali is a very gifted artist who doesn’t care about the common ways of society. Anyhow, the worried parents of Ali decide to hire a borrowed wife to prepare their son to his arranged marriage with the girl next door whose father also happens to be a very powerful figure in the city.

Then we go to another part of the city, the skid row, and see the conditions which make a woman accept such a job. Emine is a very beautiful woman who used to make her living with her “teaching skills”, but has quit sometime ago. Emine has a fiancé though, but he is in prison because he fought and wounded a man to protect Emine’s honor. As the story develops, we see that this street bully is indeed in love with Emine and sincerely wants to marry her and provide her a respected life as she deserves.

The rest of the film is actually a fine romance where we see a love emerging between Ali and his teacher Emine. You somehow feel that there are some points which should have been emphasized like the power game Ali’s father play as the mayor of the city, or how exactly the society treats Emine out of the walls of a highly respected mansion, but yet, this is a very decent and well-written story which never bores you. But what is more important about this particular story is that, while it provides you a light entertainment with the romantic-comedy tone, it also gives clues of the social life of the early ages of Turkish Republic if you are willing to discover.

If you are bored with the typical Hollywood packs and want to discover something different which doesn’t also happen to be deadly boring for the sake of “art”, you may try this film if you have the chance to watch it. You can watch the trailer of the movie and I guess some more from this link, yet the I can’t promise you the quality of the video.