The Series Fans Call a 'Perfect 365 Days Replacement' Just Landed on Netflix

Summary

• On February 8, The Turkish Ashes was released on Netflix.
• The movie is an erotic thriller about a woman who falls in love with a carpenter who resembles a character in a manuscript she is reading.
• Although the movie has very low ratings, many fans of the genre have commented that it is a great replacement for 365 Days.

Here we are, Valentine's Day has come and gone, and we hope it wasn't a bitter and lonely one for you. Anyway, the air is still saturated with the atmosphere of searing romance and passion. So why not spend your spare time watching romantic movies? Boring? Then how about some steamy erotic thrillers, especially since one was recently added to the Netflix library?

A week ago, the Netflix library was updated with a number of new movies and series, and one of them turned out to be the feature-length drama Ashes, a Netflix original from Turkey. It's hard to tell what genre the movie is, as it tries to be both a psychological drama and an erotic thriller, but doesn't always succeed at both, though it clearly attempts to resemble another Netflix hit, Poland's 365 Days. Is this new feature-length release worth watching in the end? Let's get to the bottom of it.

What Is This Turkish Drama About?

Gökçe (Funda Eryiğit) seems to have everything a person could dream of: a perfect husband, a luxurious home, and access to untold riches. But how much does she like living in this sanitized idyll? After all, her husband, the popular writer Kenan (Mehmet Günsür), is a rather pathetic man. Yes, she owes her lavish lifestyle mainly to him. However, Kenan is incredibly self-absorbed: He even reduced his and Gökçe's 10th wedding anniversary to his books, bragging at the party about his achievements and the fact that his wife is always the first reviewer of his manuscripts.

As for their sex life, it seems to be even more negligible than Gökçe's admiration for her husband. As a result, she prefers to spend all her free time outside the house, mostly in the boutique she owns.

But then one day she gets her hands on Kenan's new manuscript with the working title Ashes. The novel literally turns Gökçe's head with its passion, eroticism, and profound realism, as the action also takes place in Istanbul and revolves around a passionate affair with carpenter M, a person whose lifestyle and wealth seem completely alien to Gökçe. While reading the manuscript, she also meets Metin (Alperen Duymaz), a carpenter, with whom she develops an equally passionate affair as in the book.

Only the plot turns into real events, which makes Gökçe wonder what is fiction and what is reality. Actually, no, she doesn't think much about it, because her mind is only occupied with passionate sex with a man who can finally satisfy her.

Is Ashes Worth Watching?

Many people compared the movie to the Polish erotic thriller 365 Days, about the love and passion between a young Warsaw woman and the head of a Sicilian mafia clan. There are indeed parallels: the protagonist is also unhappy with her partner, also enters into a "forbidden" relationship (yes, polygamy does not exist in erotic films), also experiences something comparable to Stockholm syndrome, and also conducts crazy erotic games with her mysterious new lover.

'Ashes will never burn,' reads the first line of the manuscript. However, it can be countered with 'ashes to ashes, dust to dust,' and it is this phrase that would perfectly reflect the sentiments of viewers and critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, Ashes has a 33% score from critics and an even lower 13% score from audiences.

While 365 Days has a self-aware story and its campiness becomes the main attraction, Ashes dwells exclusively on sex scenes, which are not always hot, and completely forgets about the development of its characters.