Mustang – Film Review by Frank L.

Director: Deniz Gamze Ergüven
Writers: Deniz Gamze Ergüven, Alice Winocour
Stars: Günes Sensoy, Doga Zeynep Doguslu, Tugba Sunguroglu

Ergüven co-wrote the script with Alice Winocour, whom she had met at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. This is her directorial debut. The story takes place in a remote village on the Turkish Black Sea coast. The central core is the bond between five orphaned sisters who live with their grandmother and an uncle. The sisters are on the verge of discovering the delights of the outside world and in particular boys. However the grandmother and the uncle are steeped in traditional attitudes very different than those entertained by the sisters.  They believe as a matter of faith that elders arrange marriages for the young and as they are the guardians of the five girls they are fanatical in their determination to pick each a suitable young man.

The film opens with the sisters horse playing along the sea shore with a group of boys. Nothing untoward happens if the moral compass of the society is that of the Western world at the beginning of the twenty first century. However that is not the society. It appears to have certain outward attributes of such a society but the allotted fate of a young girl is to become a bride of a young man chosen not by her but by her parents or guardians. Ergüven details the pressures placed on young girls to conform to this system. But the youngest girl is by far the most feisty; she will not easily submit. At times the scenes are squirmingly embarrassing such as the inspection of the sheets after “the first night” of one of the sisters. However Ergüven has a delicate comic touch which makes the injustice to the sisters seem even more grotesque.

Ergüven chose non-professional actors to play the five sisters. One of the benefits of such a choice are several enchanting sequences of them relaxing and fooling around nonchalantly together in their carefully regulated, hidden world. It is their innocent intimacy as they face the power of arranged marriages which drives the story.

Arranged marriages from a Western perspective seem an extraordinary denial of civil liberties but it is well to remember that varying degrees of such a system operated undisturbed in most societies until relatively recent times. Mustang shows it in operation in what outwardly appears to be a modern society. Mustang is however a gentle film with Ergüven skilfully allowing us to enter the world of the sisters. It’s an impressive and worthwhile debut and is to be enjoyed.