Movie Review – Mustang

An emotional close to heart feminist film

Foreign films are always a pleasure to watch because by the time it transcends boundaries and comes within our reach, it would have already undergone so many filters, by passed so many criterion and would reach us only if it’s worth. So when it comes to foreign films, one can be rest assured that it’d be of minimum guarantee. So as soon as I saw subtitles for the film I was happy. Plus the film revolved around five beautiful girls. So I was rest assured that I wouldn’t regret watching it.

As soon as the film started it reminded me of ‘32A’. It had all the vibes of ‘32A’. May be in some time when the first serious scene appears and with the diction of the language, my mind wavered through to ‘About Elly’ too, it would have been because I watched it recently. But otherwise, as soon as you see a household of the girls, you’d get reminded of Iranian films because we’ve been exposed to Iranian films more than Turkish ones. But the film treaded more on the former line and was a lot more global than ‘32A’. ’32A’ felt more personal when compared to this and thus I would rate it better between the two. But that doesn’t take anything away from ‘Mustang’ though.

The film revolves around five beautiful young woman, intentionally avoiding to use the term “kids”. The five sisters, Lale (Güneş Şensoy), Nur (Doğa Doğuşlu), Ece (Elit İşcan), Selma (Tuğba Sunguroğlu), Sonay (İlayda Akdoğan) are all equally charming individuals, part of an extremely strict Turkish household of the countryside. They’re represented as a society. Not sure whether the reality really is that bad but through the film we are made to feel so like that.

Lale, the youngest and the most dynamic gets to see what all their elder sisters had to undergo, so she plans to escape right from the start. With every sister being married off, we could potentially feel Lale’s tension where she knows that the bullet was going to pierce her sooner or later. Through voiceover, when she tells about their last night together, it was a deeply emotional moment.

Sonay, the prettiest or may be even the hottest of all, luckily has a life she wishes too but same can’t be said about Selma, who is married off to the individual who comes to see Sonay. I didn’t know that the bed sheet ritual happens in that part of the world too. I thought the plates would change after sometime but we don’t get to hear anything about them further. Thus assuming that Sonay lived happily but Selma didn’t. Anyways the film was about Lale, more than anyone else, so that could be a reason too.

Similarly when the next one gets ready to be married off, she starts acting differently and kills herself off. It was mentioned that she was sexually abused by her uncle but I couldn’t get it while watching the film but she looked despondent, ever since her marriage had been announced. She comes to a stage that she doesn’t care about anything but her death happens out of the blue. Wonder why even her death ceremony was conducted secretly and there were not any interventions from police. That idea looked far-fetched.

Now when it comes for the penultimate one, Nur. The marriage looks sudden. She visibly looks very young for marriage and Lale gets as much surprised as us. As Lale had already known to drive, I knew what was going to be the climax but there was a moment of scare, when she gets into an accident while driving the car. I thought she’d get caught but luckily they escape.

In fact the whole moment till the last shot was scary because I didn’t want the film to have a depressing ending. I was skeptical of the guy who was helping her and as she reaches Istanbul and searches for an address, it didn’t look like a typical residential place. Plus a male opens the door in the climax. But finally when a warm embrace happens with her teacher just like that of scene one, we could be rest assured that all is well. May be they’d have to face further challenges in life but for the moment when that scene happened, it felt like a relief.