The Turkish-German actor Birol Ünel talks as if he had a larynx full of ground glass. He walks around half-blind because of the greasy locks draped over his right eye. He does not clean up real nice; his face, when shaved, reacts with shock, as if his skin wanted to recoil from the fresh air. We Americans cannot understand him. Only certain Europeans, the ones who believe Nick Cave is a profound artist, vibrate to the basso thrum of Birol Ünel.

Ünel is the hero, if you can call him that, of Akin's aptly titled Head-On, which would deserve your attention if only because of the success it has already won. The film took the top prize at the 2004 Berlin Film Festival, went on to score five German Academy Awards and finished the year by claiming the European Film Award. I caught the picture at the Museum of Modern Art's "Premieres" series, in advance of its mid-January theatrical release, and can testify that I was intermittently amused and never bored, despite the full two-hour running time. That said, I'm most interested in Head-On for what it suggests about its audience's sensibility.

To Nick Cavean romance of self-destruction and cosmopolitan anomie, Head-On now adds a dash of Oriental flavor, both savory and sour. Cahit (Ünel), a janitor in a Hamburg nightclub, meets cute with Sibel (Sibel Kekilli) in a state hospital for the flamboyantly suicidal. He has recently had his late-night encounter with the wall, just because it was there; and she has slashed her wrists, to suggest to her tradition-bound family that she would prefer to live like a secular European. "Are you Turkish? Marry me," she says to Cahit by way of introduction. There will be no sex and no obligations on his part; he'll hardly even know she's around. All she requires of him is the protective cover of a Turkish husband. Sibel is twenty years younger than Cahit, has the serenely elongated face of a Modigliani painting and offers to show "the most wonderful tits you've ever seen." (The promise, of course, is really being made to the audience; and given the European art-house tradition to which Head-On adheres, Sibel will keep her word.) Despite these stipulations, or perhaps because of them, Cahit turns her down, until she persuades him with a fresh wrist-opening.

For much of the next hour, Head-On plays for laughs, as Cahit carries out his woefully inadequate imposture, grumbles about the transformation of his apartment ("It's like a chick bomb went off in here," he mutters, after the crumpled beer cans disappear from the sink) and of course falls in love with his wife, who remains untouchably within arm's reach and is oblivious to his feelings, hidden as they are beneath a thick layer of scabs. This material is maybe a little rougher than what Americans are used to getting, either in today's comedy clubs or in yesterday's movies about generational conflict on the Lower East Side, but it's conventional enough--pleasing and well done, but familiar. I would guess, though, that it's novel to European audiences, who are still struggling to assimilate the fact that Muslims of Turkish background are born in their countries, speak their languages and aren't going away.

Except there's a twist in Head-On. Sibel and Cahit are going away.

The film's second hour, which is not played for laughs, has Sibel cutting off her hair and going to Istanbul, where she switches to a more thrashing mode of self-destruction, similar to her husband's. What Cahit is doing for most of this time, you don't need to learn from me. It's enough to say that the characters are soaked in blood, more often than not, and eventually discover they have two countries in which they don't feel at home.

To me, this enforced glumness became irritating; but then, I'm an American. I expect fantasies of immigration and acculturation to involve playacting, lovemaking and guarded optimism; whereas Europeans, of whatever background, have apparently found those qualities to be the surprise in Head-On, and the abjection of the second act to be the expected and necessary pay-off. In fact, in a canned interview, Fatih Akin has revealed that he originally planned the film's ending to be happier, along the lines of a comedy of remarriage. Then the need for loss and misery pressed itself upon him--and very successfully, too, given the film's record to date.

Framing the action, by the way, are performances of traditional Turkish songs by the Romany band of Selim Sesler, featuring Idil Üner as vocalist. Shot on location before a picture-postcard view of Istanbul, the musical numbers provide both ironic commentary and much-needed leavening for the story. I would recommend Head-On if only for them--and, of course, for the three minutes of comedy that Akin wrings out of the question of whether a gift box of chocolates contains any liquor.

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