How Mus­tang evokes the com­ing-of-age melan­choly of The Vir­gin Suicides

What does the loss of inno­cence feel like for a teenage girl in mod­ern day Turkey and 1970s Michi­gan? Shame­ful, con­fus­ing and like the world is clos­ing in on you is the answer accord­ing to Sofia Coppola’s debut fea­ture from 1999 and Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s first film, co-writ­ten with Alice Winocour.

The Vir­gin Sui­cides opens with a sting­ing grace as we are intro­duced to the youngest of the Lis­bon sis­ters, Cecelia (Han­na Hall), who has slit her wrists due to the pro­found sad­ness of it all. As she lays there in her hos­pi­tal bed, a doc­tor approach­es and says, ​“You’re not even old enough to know how hard life gets.” She replies mat­ter-of-fact­ly: ​“Obvi­ous­ly, doc­tor, you’ve nev­er been a 13-year-old girl.” In Mus­tang we too meet the youngest of five sis­ters in the rebel­lious Lale (Günes Sen­soy), as she explains how life was going well until ​“it all turned to shit.”

Before the poi­son of sex­u­al shame and gen­der expec­ta­tions hems in these young women – who are all at some point required to wear bag­gy dress­es in order to hide their blos­som­ing fig­ures – they are allowed to expe­ri­ence free­dom and fun. Yet this is also what even­tu­al­ly sees them locked up and hid­den away from the rest of the world.

In The Vir­gin Sui­cides, the Lis­bon sis­ters are placed under house arrest and tak­en out of school by their strict moth­er (Kath­leen Turn­er) after hav­ing a taste of the good stuff at prom with the defi­ant Lux (Kirsten Dun­st) break­ing cur­few and stay­ing out into the ear­ly hours. In Mus­tang, when the local gos­sip mill makes it known that the sis­ters have played a game in the sea with the local boys, they are rep­ri­mand­ed and forced to take a vir­gin­i­ty test by their strict uncle. After they get bored of inhab­it­ing what Lale describes as ​“a wife fac­to­ry”, the group head out to a foot­ball match. When their grand­ma dis­cov­ers this, things take a turn for the worse – bars are placed on the win­dows on their home atop a sun kissed val­ley and the sis­ters are lined up for marriage.

Both groups of girls run around and laze in dap­pled sun­light, their long, untamed brown and blonde locks flow­ing. When they are alone they play­ful­ly inter­act like cubs. With their limbs tan­gled across one anoth­er they almost seem to be turn­ing into one being. In The Vir­gin Sui­cides, the Lis­bon sis­ter are viewed as mys­te­ri­ous crea­tures, with their sad sto­ry told from the point of view of a group of teenage boys. In Mus­tang, Lale nar­rates and despite some dis­tress­ing moments, there is redemp­tion through the fact that women are most­ly seen to be help­ing one anoth­er out.

Society’s obses­sion with vir­ginal puri­ty teach­es them to be ashamed of their bod­ies and for the Lis­bon girls there is no hope. Their act of rebel­lion is to remove them­selves by death. Cop­po­la does not place blame on their actions but instead looks to the com­mu­ni­ty haunt­ing them with a ghast­ly green smog and stench. At the end of each film a shot reflect­ing on a fleet­ing moment of hap­pi­ness – the wind blow­ing in their hair as they ride away in vehi­cles with no rules or reg­u­la­tions imposed on them – evokes the free­dom and choice that these girls so des­per­ate­ly long for. These flash­es of escape are both exhil­a­rat­ing and melan­cholic, beguil­ing snap­shots of their wild spir­its being let loose that also reveal the frus­tra­tion of untapped potential.

Mus­tang is in cin­e­mas and on demand from 13 May.