Mus­tang

Before Mus­tang received an Acad­e­my Award nom­i­na­tion, when all any­one had to go on was an opaque title, the film was being sold as, ​‘a Turk­ish Vir­gin Sui­cides.’ The log­line is irre­sistible, for there are numer­ous sur­face sim­i­lar­i­ties to Sofia Coppola’s 1999 debut feature.

Both piv­ot around five sis­ters, all with long hair that glints in the sun. They are so close-knit that they appear as a five-head­ed mass of limbs and laugh­ter. The dark­ness that slow­ly encroach­es on youth­ful free­dom is also the same, tak­ing the form of a fear of female sex­u­al­i­ty. The scene in which the girls’ weary grand­moth­er locks up all their colour­ful gad­gets and play­things is a direct homage.

Like the Lis­bon sis­ters before them, these five sur­name-less orphans look like minia­ture princess­es. They radi­ate fairy tale fem­i­nin­i­ty, look­ing pic­turesque even as their dia­logue grounds them in irrev­er­ent sib­ling ban­ter. Mus­tang steps out from any com­par­a­tive shad­ow by virtue of the grip­ping speci­fici­ty of the nar­ra­tive. The tools with which a fear­some patri­arch oppress­es and impris­ons the girls are root­ed in the for­ma­tive expe­ri­ences of direc­tor, Deniz Gamze Ergüven. While the shape and pitch of the sto­ry could be the shape and pitch of any sto­ry where men tram­ple over women, Mus­tang is root­ed in rur­al Turkey, here rep­re­sent­ed as a con­fus­ing­ly idyl­lic vil­lage next to the Black Sea.

The girls enjoy an open­ing that is free from the stric­tures of gen­der norms in this time and place, but, through the shocked reac­tions of fam­i­ly and neigh­bours alike, Ergüven makes it clear that it’s dan­ger­ous to want a full and rich life when you hap­pen to have been born female. What makes Mus­tang so affect­ing is the vivac­i­ty with which the girls are shown enjoy­ing their free­dom, despite the threat­en­ing spec­tre of the pow­ers-that-be. A water fight in the sea and an illic­it trip to a foot­ball match are soaked in joy. The gid­dy aban­don of youth­ful plea­sures are writ large across blissed-out faces and fast mouths. The sto­ry moves at speed, with Ergüven con­stant­ly resist­ing the temp­ta­tion to pause and wring sen­ti­ment from a dra­mat­ic devel­op­ment. One moment the sis­ters are as free as wild hors­es, the next the bone-dry nar­ra­tion by the youngest, Lale (Günes Sen­soy), says, ​“The house became a wife fac­to­ry that we nev­er got out of.”

The script is a mas­ter­class in lean sto­ry­telling. Sor­row is expressed spar­ing­ly, and often dashed with a sto­ic sense of humour. Punch­lines are usu­al­ly an image, enabling the film to keep up the com­bined momen­tum of potent­ly plea­sur­able visu­als atop smooth nar­ra­tive wheels. The sis­ters are pho­tographed with rev­er­ence for their lithe beau­ty. Their phys­i­cal sim­i­lar­i­ties and the ease with which they drape them­selves upon each oth­er make it hard to fig­ure out exact­ly who is who.

As you do fig­ure it out, it’s because their num­bers are dwin­dling. When this hap­pens it becomes clear that this is Lale’s sto­ry, which also scans as the sto­ry of all women who – at least tem­porar­i­ly – man­age to tran­scend abuse. War­ren Ellis’ melan­cholic score, which works away in the back­ground, has a chance to exert all its mus­cu­lar­i­ty in a trav­el sequence, which is the film’s sole moment of repose. It is a moment in which the loss­es and injus­tices of these girl chil­dren final­ly exerts their heavy weight.