Even from an air-conditioned theater in drizzly Seattle, you can feel the stifling Turkish heat in Three Monkeys, a grim family drama that opens with thunderclaps and death and closes with thundering trains and more death.

A rising politician is driving down a road at night, through a tunnel of low-hanging trees, when, dozing, he hits a pedestrian in the dark. The pedestrian does not get up, and the politician—fearing for his chances in the upcoming election—gets the hell out of there. Cut to a shabby but comfortable apartment, where the politician convinces his longtime driver—the mustachioed, brooding Eyüp—to take the fall. In exchange, he promises a lump sum for Eyüp's family (his beautiful wife, Hacer, and even more beautiful son, Ismail).

Three Monkeys—which won Best Director at Cannes last year—is an understated noirish drama full of lies, yellow light, sexually charged violence, and a few startling moments of ghostly magical realism. Big secrets start to percolate up through the heavy, dripping heat: Hacer's infidelity, and the unexplained death of a child that appears to have poisoned this little family years before.

This film is slow, and it's bleak. It also asks more questions than it answers—leaving gaping holes on the matters of family dynamics (were they ever happy?), Eyüp's rage (was he always so brutal? Is it a symptom or a cause?), and, of course, that small, sad dead child who haunts all the proceedings. These informational gaps, rather than being a distraction, lend a credible humanity to the whole thing: You know what you need to know, which is that the best intentions can lead down the most destructive paths, sometimes communication is impossible, and some secrets should stay secret.

This article has been updated since its original publication.