In Good Hands ฝากรักไว้ให้ดูแล (2022) [บรรยายไทย]

Melisa (Asli Enver) has five months to live, give or take a month. She walks out of the doctor’s office fresh with the bad news and stops. She closes her eyes and imagines herself on a beach looking pensively out upon the ocean. Compounding the tragedy is the fact that she and her six-year-old son Can (Mert Ege Ak) are inseparable. His father is out of the picture, although the boy treasures a photo of the three of them from years ago. She’s a single mother in a small Istanbul apartment, sharing a bedroom with the boy, a curtain separating their beds. She waits tables, and he sits quietly in the corner of the restaurant. They walk to school, and they briefly part, innately aware of where the other is on either side of a tall concrete wall; he runs back to her. She doesn’t make him go. Why should she? Their time together is short. Whatever her unspecified ailment is, it hasn’t taken a physical toll on her yet, and the kicker is, Can doesn’t know his mother is dying.

But Melisa must face the inevitable. Fatos (Ezgi Senler) is her co-worker, close friend and confidant. She offers to take care of the boy after… you know. Melisa brushes off the offer for reasons unknown. Fatos scrolls through photos on a dating app, encouraging Melisa to maybe go hang out with a human male her own age for a change. Maybe it’s not a terrible idea, although it becomes one when Melisa wonders if she should start dating and maybe find someone to be Can’s guardian, which seems like a lot to ask of someone who’ll get a few months to acclimate to the situation and subsequently watch her cough a lot until she’s gone, but that’s just a consideration you or I might make, being logical people. We’re not sure if Melisa takes the notion seriously, but there it is, floating through the plot.

One day in a cafe, an impatient man in line behind Melisa and Can treats them like crap. Total creep. Chode city. He’s Firat (Kaan Urgancıoğlu), a wealthy playboy who Melisa sees again at the newsstand, staring up at her from a magazine cover. He’s a bicycle magnate, I think – it’s never made clear. She keeps seeing his face here and there, which she interprets as a sign. She seeks him out at a nightclub and he recognizes her and says mean things to her. They do about five vodka shots each and somehow remain upright and clear-headed. They sit together at the end of a dock and have a lovely evening, but doesn’t sleep with him, and seems to have forgotten that he’s a boorish jackass who tends to treat women like tissue – use once, throw away. What gives? Does she see something in Firat that we don’t? Apparently, and that manifests as they see each other more and takes a shine to Can, turning his insult – “little monster” – into a term of endearment. Is this really going to work? Is Firat going to be Can’s dad now? IF ONLY IT WERE SO SIMPLE.