(Clockwise from left): Tugba Sunguroglu, Ilayda Akdogan, Gunes Sensoy, Elit Iscan and Doga Zeynep Doguslu
“MUSTANG” My rating: B+ (Opens March 26 at the Tivoli)
97 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13
The Oscar-nominated (for best foreign language film) “Mustang” already has been denounced in some quarters as anti-Islamic and/or anti-Turkish.
But the true target of writer/director Deniz Gamze Erguven’s remarkable film is patriarchy, a social system hardly exclusive to any one religion or country.
At first glance this effort from Erguven (born in Turkey but since adolescence a resident of France) and co-writer Alice Winocur looks like a clone of Sofia Coppola’s 1999 “The Virgin Suicides.”
In a seaside Turkish burg five orphaned sisters (their ages range from 10 to 16) are being raised by their grandmother, who does the nurturing, and by a bachelor uncle, a lawyer who by virtue of his sex is considered the head of the household and the last word on all matters involving his wards.
As the film begins the girls have just been freed for summer vacation and celebrate by romping in the surf with several boys from their school. They’re all fully dressed and, by Western standards, their play seems harmless enough.
But some busybody notices the girls riding on the shoulders of the boys as they joust in the waves, and word gets back to Uncle Erol (Ayberk Pecan), who goes ballistic at the impropriety of it all. The girls are accused of salaciousness and subjected to medical exams to ensure that they remain virgins.
It’s not so much that the girls are rebellious as they are naturally happy, rowdy, mischievous young people. Granted, the fierce energy exhibited by these beautiful “mustangs” has an unmistakably sexual component, but the girls know the ground rules. Even the oldest, Sonay (Ilayda Akdogan), who sneaks out at night to be with her boyfriend, confides to her siblings that she practices anal sex so that she can go to her wedding a virgin.
Some of the episodes here are humorous — like the girls taking off (without permission) to attend a big soccer match, and the efforts of one of their aunts to hide that fact from the menfolk (she sabotages the neighborhood’s electrical grid lest the uncles see their nieces in crowd shots of the televised game).
But as the battle of wills deepens, things take a darker turn. The family compound gets a new, taller, spike-topped wall. Bars go up on all the windows. The computer, cell phones, makeup, toiletries — “anything likely to pervert us” — are confiscated.
No more cutoff jeans. Instead the sisters are forced to wear the “shapeless, shit-colored” dresses that mark grown village women.
At the same time Uncle Erol launches matchmaking efforts to marry off the two oldest girls. Their wishes don’t matter.
About halfway through “Mustang” the story shifts focus to the youngest sister, Lale (Gunes Sensoy), the narrator of the tale and a fierce spirit far brighter than anyone gives her credit for. Like the Count of Monte Cristo she launches a long-term plan for escape, even coaxing a good-natured local delivery boy into giving her driving lessons with his truck.
She may still have a child’s body, but her will is that of a free woman.
“Mustang” is, at its core, about patriarchy’s terror at the thought of female sexuality, no matter how innocent. The power in that idea makes the film triumphant and lyrical despite moments of tragedy and brutal realism.
| Robert W. Butler
Butler's Cinema Scene 
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