Review of Mustang (2015) by Adrian S — 04 Jun 2016

Girls and women are so often marginalized, often even in films that are about the specific difficulties they face just by existing. It is all too common to have these stories told through the eyes of a close male friend or family member.

On film, even female suffering appears to need to be filtered through the male experience to validate it. Mustang is having none of that. Told through the eyes of a group of cousins/sisters who are Locke up by their grandmother to groom them for good marriages after rumours spread through their town of their indecent behaviour.

Even through forced arraigned marriages are at the centre of the film, Mustang most definatly belongs to the girls and not their oppressors. The girls in Mustang are incredibly free even within their confines.

They refuse to accept their imprisonment, pushing back and escaping every chance that they get. Director Deniz Gamze Erguven never denies the horrible reality that the girls experience, but that is never the focus.

Their suffering is never exploited. Instead, the camera revels in the girl's joy as they play together, tease each other and continue to remain optimistic in the face of their chains. Mustang is a testament to the female spirit, that can't be broken no matter how many times we are beaten down.

Each girl finds her own form of rebellion, some small, some massive and some catastrophic, but none of them take their fate laying down. The young cast handles all the nuances of the film with exuberance and intellegence and Gomez Erguven never gives us easy answers.

The girl's family are not uniformly horrible people. Their grandmother, who sets their captivity and forced marriages in motion, seems to genuinely care about her grandchildren and be concerned for their futures.

This doesn't change the fact that the way she goes about securing those futures isn't misguided and terrible, but that is the reality of many women in similar situations. Gomez Erguven navigates the difficult grey areas with a remarkably assured hand for a first time director, creating a film that goes far beyond surface on a subject that is so often reduced to a single line.