PLOT: Two lost souls meet in a Hamburg mental hospital and enter into a marriage of convenience. They eventually fall in love with each other, but tragedy complicates matters.

Head-On (Gegen die Wand) is somewhat blood-soaked, as love stories go. Cahit (Birol Unel) is a Turkish man living in Hamburg. Living? Drinking and doping in Hamburg, let's say. Cahit finds an interesting way to stop his car one night and ends up in a psychiatric hospital as a result.

There, he meets Sibel (Sibel Kekilli), a beautiful young Turkish woman with tell-tale bandages on her wrists. These two are not warming up to life. Sibel is being harrassed by her traditional father and brother, who insist she marry a Turk. Upon meeting Cahit, Sibel sees a way out and proposes at once.

Cahit just laughs at her, but eventually she talks him into it. She'll escape a rigid family; he'll gain a roommate who can cook and clean.

So Cahit and Sibel marry. She transforms his garbage dump of an apartment into a home. Cahit, who stays drunk most of the time, has a sort-of girlfriend he sees for sex. Through her he gets Sibel a job.

On her side, Sibel revels in her newfound freedom. She casts off her culture as fast as she can, or so she thinks. Sibel gets her belly-button pierced and makes plans for a tattoo and goes dancing. She has sex with whomever she pleases. The marriage of convenience works out beautifully for both Cahit and Sibel. And then they fall in love with one another.

Head-On is an intense outing, alternating between tenderness and violence and much of it tinged with despair. There's a Charles Bukowski-like atmosphere to the events. It's a story about the transformative power of love, to be sure, but a lot of people get kicked and stomped and beaten up in the course of the whole true-love-never-did-run-smooth undertaking. Messy.

The head-on crash between cultures is a large part of the story, and trouble continues when Sibel leaves Germany and goes to Istanbul -- where she also doesn't fit in. The film's music reflects this cultural divide.

Head-On is told in five chapters, each announced by musicians and a singer who appear like a Greek chorus to sing traditional Turkish love songs. All the other music in the film is rock.

Head-On may be hopeful in intent, but it's heartbreaking nonetheless. Heartbreaking in the best way, you understand. It's in German and Turkish with English subtitles.

(This film is rated 18-A)
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