Having just gotten married in her home country of Turkey, the young and beautiful Ayse (Begum Akkaya) heads to Vienna with her new husband Hasan (Murathan Muslu, channelling Tom Hardy with every inch of his being) to live with him and his family. But things are clearly not right from the start; nobody seems particularly happy at the wedding itself, Hasan's mother Fatma (Nihal G. Koldas) is clearly quite ill, and on the couple's wedding night, Hasan is nowhere to be seen, and Ayse spends her first night as a married woman in bed with Hasan's father.
Though it takes some time to make clear, eventually the film reveals that Ayse was never meant for Hasan, and is intended to be his father's second wife. However, as polygamy is illegal in Austria, she must keep up this charade for the sake of the family, even as some of them continue to distance themselves from her.
Once the confusing opening twenty minutes have sorted themselves out, Kuma turns out to be a fantastic look at a woman caught in a world and culture that she doesn't fully understand. Hasan and his family are drowning in secrets, and even as they slowly warm to her, they are still dragging her down with them.
However, the movie doesn't sit still for too long, never lingering on any one problem or event for too long; there's mention of a party in two days' time, and the next scene is at that party, or Ayse will be suffering from her first attack of morning sickness, and in the next scene she’s several months pregnant. It's a trick that helps keep what may otherwise feel like an endless conveyor belt of depression feel less like an endurance test.
Filled to the brim with staggeringly powerful performances as well as nuanced and controlled direction, both of which help alleviate the soap-opera-y plot above mere melodramatics, Kuma is fantastic peek behind the curtain into a fascinatingly dysfunctional lifestyle.