“I wanted to talk about what it feels like to be a girl and a woman in today’s Turkey, where the condition of women is an important public matter, more than ever before. It’s obvious that the fact that I have a different perspective because of living in France plays a key role in my outlook. Every time I go back, I have an oppressing feeling that startles me,” says Turkish-French female filmmaker Deniz Gamze Ergüven about Mustang, her accomplished film debut co-written with French screenwriter and director Alice Winocour.
It premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight of the Cannes film festival, was featured at the Toronto filmfest, then nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Golden Globes, and has recently been nominated for Best Foreign Language Film (representing France) for the upcoming Academy Awards. In addition, it’s been critically acclaimed and has been regarded as a Turkish version of Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides — which is partly right as Coppola’s film is narrated from a male perspective whereas Mustang is narrated from one the sisters’ point of view.
For Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s opus addresses the fierce oppression imposed by an extremely conservative environment upon the blossoming of female sexuality. Girls just want to be girls, but certain families and certain societies won’t let them. However, repression can’t last forever. For better or for worse, a change is bound to come sometime.
Mustang is set in Turkey in a distant Black Sea village and filmed in Turkish by a director who’s been living in France for many years, hence its European art-house style. It takes place in summer, it’s the last day of school and Lale (the youngest sibling) and her four sisters are spending some time at the beach. Together with a couple of local boys, they play in the sea. They sit on their shoulders and throw water at one another. They laugh. They have fun. A neighbour, an old woman, sees them and tells their grandma. To their eyes, the girls’ spontaneous game is nothing but masturbating on the boys’ bodies. They should know better than rubbing their bodies together.
So the girls get beaten by their uncle, are subjected to virginity tests and then locked in the house. Almost all personal items are taken away from them: mobile phones, make up, informal clothing, computers, … you name it. In turn, many aunties come to teach the sisters all sorts of domestic skills, cooking at the top of the list. However, there are some moments of freedom as the sisters manage to flee the house for a soccer game, for instance. But they pay a high price for their daring behaviour. Literally and figuratively, the house turns into a very hard to escape prison. And this is only the beginning.
At first, what strikes you the most about Mustang is the caliber of the performances of a largely unknown cast of young women. There’s such naturality and authenticity that only because of that you are bound to feel you are watching quite a good film not even ten minutes into it. Secondly, there’s smooth camerawork that never draws attention to itself but instead captures the character’s emotions and thoughts with uncanny sensitivity. It’s the sort of camerawork that subtly elicits meanings from the characters rather than spelling them out. Moreover, there’s a well established sense of space, as the house, for instance, is seen from all angles and yet it always remains a prison. The outside world remains elusive as the girls are an island onto themselves. And yes, there’s a feeling of oppression too, from beginning to end.
As far as formal values, Mustang is a finely-tuned piece of work. Not an extraordinary one for there’s nothing groundbreaking here, but one that’s been crafted with talent and care. As far as the narrative goes, the script works fine more often than not. Characters are developed enough; their interaction is believable, they sound and act in a credible fashion. And the episodes and occurrences are never contrived. That is until you reach the ending. Because the ending does somehow change the nature of the film. Though what happens could perhaps take place in real life (although it’s very unlikely), it nonetheless is the stuff fables are made of. Perhaps only a fable could bring about freedom. Realism couldn’t account for it. Maybe, the ending is what you would like to see happen. At least for once. But you know it can’t happen. In any case, it’s true that it feels artificial and it minimizes the overall bleakness of an otherwise somber panorama.
And yet this is deliberate, that’s for sure. On the other hand, it could be the filmmaker’s way of saying: there’s life as long as there’s hope, so to speak. Clearly, she wanted to tell a story of triumph, albeit with its casualties. In this sense, it has nothing to do with The Virgin Suicides which, even if romanticized, it still more realistic —all the more so its ending.
@pablsuarez
