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Mustang is a Turkish film that follows the lives of five orphaned sisters as they struggle with the conservative beliefs and upbringing of their grandmother and uncle who are raising them. The above exchange comes at a point when the grandmother has had enough of the girls behavior and decides to isolate them at their home as she marries them off.
The film is co-written and directed by Deniz Gamze Ergüven, and apparently the catalyst event is inspired in her own experience as a Turkish girl. The "catalyst event" is nothing but an innocent game of "chicken fight" with some male friends at the beach; something that their grandmother (Nihal Koldaş) classifies as her "granddaughters, pleasuring themselves on boys' necks". That gives you an idea of the kind of "conservative" mindset they're trapped in.
After this event, the girls are taken off school, and groomed to be "perfect wives"; cooking, sewing, cleaning. Their regular clothes are traded by shapeless garbs which they refer to as "sh-it-colored dresses", bars are set in their windows, locks on the doors... and for every window barred and key turned, the girls grow up more determined to run away any way they can.
The comparisons with Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides are expected, but I'll just say that I appreciated more Ergüven's approach which, unlike the former, manages to flesh out each daughter well enough for the story to have an emotional baggage. The performances from the girls, most of which weren't professional actresses, are also pretty good and they each manage to convey both a sense of individuality to each of them, as well as the endearing yet tragic bond between them.
There are some brief tidbits of narration, provided by the youngest daughter, Lale (Güneş Şensoy), which are not entirely necessary, but the dramatic weight and tension of what is happening is enough to make of this a very surprising discovery.
Grade:
MUSTANG
(2015, Ergüven)
A film with a title that starts with the letters M or N
(2015, Ergüven)
A film with a title that starts with the letters M or N
"The house became a wife factory that we never came out of."
Mustang is a Turkish film that follows the lives of five orphaned sisters as they struggle with the conservative beliefs and upbringing of their grandmother and uncle who are raising them. The above exchange comes at a point when the grandmother has had enough of the girls behavior and decides to isolate them at their home as she marries them off.
The film is co-written and directed by Deniz Gamze Ergüven, and apparently the catalyst event is inspired in her own experience as a Turkish girl. The "catalyst event" is nothing but an innocent game of "chicken fight" with some male friends at the beach; something that their grandmother (Nihal Koldaş) classifies as her "granddaughters, pleasuring themselves on boys' necks". That gives you an idea of the kind of "conservative" mindset they're trapped in.
After this event, the girls are taken off school, and groomed to be "perfect wives"; cooking, sewing, cleaning. Their regular clothes are traded by shapeless garbs which they refer to as "sh-it-colored dresses", bars are set in their windows, locks on the doors... and for every window barred and key turned, the girls grow up more determined to run away any way they can.
The comparisons with Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides are expected, but I'll just say that I appreciated more Ergüven's approach which, unlike the former, manages to flesh out each daughter well enough for the story to have an emotional baggage. The performances from the girls, most of which weren't professional actresses, are also pretty good and they each manage to convey both a sense of individuality to each of them, as well as the endearing yet tragic bond between them.
There are some brief tidbits of narration, provided by the youngest daughter, Lale (Güneş Şensoy), which are not entirely necessary, but the dramatic weight and tension of what is happening is enough to make of this a very surprising discovery.
Grade: