Wax-scented Women (Mum Kokulu Kadınlar)

İrfan Tözüm directed Mum Kokulu Kadınlar (Wax-scented Women), a Turkish drama released on 18 October 1996. Tözüm wrote the screenplay from a work by Mete Özgencil. The 94-minute colour film, produced by Ardahan Uzunatağan and Tözüm, drew both praise and criticism for its visual eroticism and score, and a television channel that aired it was penalised with a closure order by RTÜK.

The story opens in a Beşiktaş mansion in the later 1940s, where Firuzan Hanım (Hülya Karakaş) gives birth to İhsan and in the 1950s adopts a girl of five or six, Fatma; the two grow up like siblings. In the 1960s İhsan (Halil Ergün), a Robert College student, falls deeply in love with Natalie (Ceren Erginsoy), whose suicide sends him into seclusion. By the 1970s his mother has died and the family has collapsed; Fatma (Selma Güneri) has married, and her daughter Belkıs is played by Hande Ataizi. Four women in the same neighbourhood, unaware of one another, look for a way out of their loneliness; İhsan, who has not left the mansion for years, offers to meet them in the grove, and events speed up.

The film was a breakthrough for Hande Ataizi and, despite its awards, drew harsh criticism.