Review // Mustang

[projekktor id=’22657′]

Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s Mustang is an intimate portrait of five sisters growing up in a small Islamic community in rural Turkey. After a minor scandal rocks the family, the girls are stripped of all freedom. While the eldest are quickly married off, the younger sisters band together to escape their once idyllic home in favour of a life in the more progressive Turkish city of Istanbul.

Orphaned, the five sisters have been raised by their grandmother and uncle. At first their upbringing seems fairly westernized; the girls wear western clothes, attend school, and are free to hang out with their friends. However their lives are forever changed when a neighbour accuses the girls of being unclean. Their guardians overreact and the three older sisters are sent to the doctor for virginity reports. Even with their virginity proven, it is decided that they will be married before they can dishonour themselves or their family any further. As their home is turned into a prison, the sisters are pulled from regular school and instead are taught to cook, clean and serve by their grandmother and aunts.

Told from the perspective of the youngest, Lale (Günes Sensoy), Mustang is part coming of age story and part critique on the state of womanhood in modern Turkey. Lale is a tomboy; she’s active, imaginative and outspoken. Through her eyes it is easy to see how the sexes are divided. She yearns to do what boys are allowed to – go to soccer matches, drive cars and have a voice. The film is told as a retrospective, as Lale remembers her childhood and growing up with her sisters.

Ergüven co-wrote her feature film directorial debut with fellow French director Alice Winocour. The script plays out like a diary entry and the film feels like a hazy memory and looks like one too. The extreme close ups, soft focus and gaps in the time line all contribute to scenes that are attempting to recreate a feeling over an event. In a scene when Lale angers her eldest sister, her grandmother pulls her aside. But it’s not to scold her. Instead grandma teaches her how to make chewing gum. There are these beautiful beats in the film; not everything is dark and oppressive. There’s a loving warmth to the story, of a fond memory that just happened to take place during a dark time. Despite the fear of growing up, being separated and living in confinement, the film is never dark. There’s always this warm glow, a sense of hope, a lingering happiness.

Sensoy is such an incredible young talent. She is compelling as the voice of reason in a world that has lost its ability to hear. The actresses that play her sisters are just as mesmerizing. Ergüven lucked out with her cast, a group of relative new comers comprised of Doga Zeynep Dogusly as the second youngest sister Nur, Elit Iscan – who is the only one who has some screen acting experience – plays the middle sister Ece, Tugba Sunguroglu plays the second sister Selma, and Ilayda Akdogan portrays the eldest sister Sonay. The quintet have palpable chemistry, like they belong with each other. There are many scenes of the five of them laying intertwined in a mess of sisterly limbs while they talk freely, ask stupid questions and offer unsolicited advice. They feel like sisters. As they are separated it seems more like limbs have been amputated from our lead, like they are so interconnected it is hard to have one with another, and another five times over.

Mustang is a beautifully crafted story of sisterhood, coming of age, and silver linings. Ergüven’s proving she’s a director to watch, and I look forward to more from her.

Reviewed by Vithiya Murugadas.