Mustang Review: Clichés and overly baked patriarchal oppression of women


The first thing I though of after watching Mustang was how much it was inspired by Sofia Coppola's Virgin Suicides. Set in a remote village in Kastamonu, northern Turkey, about two hundred kilometers from the capital, Ankara, MUSTANG is the story of five daughters finishing school at the end of the summer and trying to cope with their family's demands. Custom dictates that once a girl reaches a certain age, she should be married off; hence the three oldest daughters are exposed to the ritual of meeting their partner (chosen for them by their family) and his family and listening to the groom's family asking for her hand in marriage. Rings are exchanged; and everyone looks forward to the festivities, when the entire village has a wild party, the men fire shots into the air, and the "happy" couple enjoy themselves ... that is, until the dreaded wedding night ritual.
 Deniz Gamze Ergüven's debut feature takes an even-handed approach towards its material. While certainly sympathizing with the girls (the narration of Lale, the youngest (Güneş Şensoy) provides an accurate indication of their feelings), the director also makes it clear that the arranged marriage of a teenage girl is part of the village custom. Nobody ever dares to challenge it, because that might destroy the fabric of everyone's lives.


Yet Mustang also has some trenchant points to make about the ways in which such traditions can be abused. Uncle Erol (Ayberk Pekcan) turns out to be a sadist as well as an abuser, whose sole response to the girls' wanting some kind of freedom is to build higher and higher walls round the house and install bars across the windows. This is a futile gesture; the more he creates a prison, the more the girls try to escape from it. There is a touching sequence early on in the film as all five daughters escape from their home and catch a bus taking female soccer supporters to Trabzon on the Black Sea coast to watch a match. Their enjoyment is both palpable and welcome.


In the end Nur decides not to go through with her arranged marriage; together with Lale they barricade themselves in the family home and manage to escape Uncle Erol's clutches at last. No one - least of all the viewers - knows precisely what will happen to them, but they have at least managed to exercise freedom of choice. The downside, of course, is that they have also endangered the stability of their village community. This ambiguity is not resolved by the film's end.



Director Ergüven coaxes some remarkable performances out of her five youthful actors as the daughters. Her cinematic style is brisk, even though there are perhaps too many extreme close-ups that draw our attention away from the characters' expressions rather than focusing on them. But unless you buy into clichés and overly baked patriarchal oppression of women in the country, you won't find this film amusing at all. 

Rating: 6/10


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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

"New Film Directors - New Discoveries" is a blog dedicated to discovering new talents worldwide. Our mission is to empower emerging screenwriters and directors and to shine a light on their work through our blog so they can reach wider audience. Terrence Peterson, the author of the blog "New Film Directors - New Discoveries" is an acclaimed film critic with the degree of philosophy in Comparative Literature at Princeton, the external lecturer at 7 universities, including Princeton and Columbia, and the receiver of The National Order of Merit. All contributors are welcome to send their texts and reviews

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