Nominated for a best foreign language Oscar earlier in the year, Mustang has received a belated release in the UK this week. Set in Northern Turkey, in the present day, five sisters are being brought up by their Uncle and his mother because their parents died some years before.
Seen innocently playing with a group of boys on the beach one day, they are reported to their guardians by a neighbour who tells them they are acting obscenely. To stop their behaviour the family home is turned into a prison. The girls are removed from school and receive instruction in homemaking. Finally, marriages start being arranged. All of the girls resent this and find different ways to resist the actions taken against them.
This film has garnered some controversy around whether this is a realistic depiction of life in rural Turkey. I can’t comment too much on that, other than to say it feels authentic and the director, Deniz Gamze Ergüven, goes to great lengths not to sensationalise the story or go overboard at pointing the finger at Islam. Additionally, the authenticity is contributed to by the actresses playing the sisters, all of them are impressive, in particular Güneş Nezihe Şensoy who plays the youngest, spirited Lale.
At times I found the story to be meandering slightly, especially around the hour mark, but the film builds up into an unexpectedly tense finale as Lale and her sister Nur try to escape the family’s clutches once and for all.
Patience is required, but this is well worth seeing for the performances alone.
Rating: 7.5 out of 10