Mustang is more than just a ‘feminist’ movie

IT DEBUTED at Cannes, won four Cesars and was nominated for an Oscar. But Australians have had to wait a year to see it. It was worth it.

REVIEW

IF YOU’VE ever seen Sofia Coppola’s wistful and tragic The Virgin Suicides, there are elements of Mustang that will hit you like a powerful wave of déjà vu.

Like Coppola’s film, Mustang’s story revolves around five free-spirited sisters effectively locked in their house by their own conservative family concerned with the girls’ virtue.

But Mustang isn’t a Turkish version of The Virgin Suicides, it’s a much more layered and meaningful film that moves beyond the melancholy that dominated Coppola’s movie.

Premiering during the Cannes Film Festival’s Director’s Fortnight in 2015, Mustang won four Cesar awards including Best First Feature Film and Best Original Screenplay. It was also nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

Australians have waited more than a year for this incredible debut by Turkish-French director Deniz Gamze Erguven.

The wait was worth it.

It’s the end of the school year and the five sisters detour to the beach on the way home from school. With their school ties reappropriated as headbands, and their long hair flowing down their backs, the girls frolic and splash in the ocean in an innocent game with some male friends.

It’s interpreted the wrong way by a moralistic neighbour in the small, judgmental rural village and the girls’ grandmother and uncle immediately overreact, forbidding them from venturing beyond the walls of the family home and ordering virginity tests.

Anything that could be seen as perverting the sisters’ innocence (computers, the phone) is taken away and the girls are bombarded with “wife lessons” from various aunts and family friends while their grandmother begins bizarre rituals to wed them off in arranged marriages.

Of the five sisters, it’s the youngest, Lale, with her rebellious streak and challenging nature that refuses to accept their new situation. She’s gutsy and exuberant as she silently plots her way out, with her eye on the more cosmopolitan Istanbul. Her cunning and desperation is palpable, fuelling the story’s momentum.

Much like the defiant spirit of Lale, Mustang can be seen as a commentary on the increasingly dangerous environment for women fostered by Turkish President Recep Erdogan with his, at best, paternalistic and, at worst, misogynistic rhetoric.

But it would be unfair to reduce Mustang as merely a “feminist” movie despite its overarching theme about female agency in the face of a deeply patriarchal world. It’s also a fascinating look into a subset of a culture many Australians would have little knowledge of.

Erguven has a naturalistic style and doesn’t seem too concerned with flash or wizardry, preferring to let the story and characters take centre stage. However, the pulsating energy present in the scenes at the women-only football match is visceral, propelling the viewer into an atmosphere of joy and freedom.

Mustang is a sombre but hopeful look into a world that overlooks seemingly insignificant and powerless people at their own peril.

Rating: 4/5

Mustang opens in cinemas on Thursday, June 23.

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