MUSTANG PROVIDES HOPE FOR GIRLS IN TURKEY’S BACK COUNTRY
Yet another film on the plight of females in Islamic countries, the French film Mustang focuses on the positive more than the negative. With occasional voiceovers from Lale (Günes Şensoy), Turkish-born director Deniz Gamze Ergüven depicts the gap between the traditional roles of females in rural Kastamonu and cosmopolitan Istanbul without identifying Islam as the culprit; feminism is instead considered the force at work. In the beginning, school is out in summertime, and the boy and girl students play together in the waters of the Black Sea. After splashing in the water, they emerge with some girls resting on top of the shoulders of boys as if in a victory parade. When word of the escapade reaches the home of five teens, the suspicion that the girls were pleasuring themselves on the necks of the boys leads to repression: A physician must then determine whether any have lost virginity; and they are ordered never to leave home. (For reasons not specified, the five sisters live with a grandmother (Nihal Koldaş) and Uncle Uncle Erol (Ayberk Pekcan.)) When Lale wants to attend an important soccer game, her uncle says No. But misconduct by fans leads to a decision to have only female spectators, so the girls are eager to go and steal away. When they return, the house is secured with new bars over windows and higher fences to prevent any future exits, and the older women turn the house into a “wife factory” to prepare them for arranged marriages. The eldest, Sonay (Ilayda Akdoğan), already has a boyfriend Ekin (Enes Surum), occasionally sneaks off to make love by the beach, and gets her wish to marry her sweetheart. Selma (Tuğba Sunguroğlu) is forced to marry Osman (Erol Afsin). Ece (Elit Işcan) commits suicide one day because she cannot stand Erol’s bullying. That leaves Nur (Doğa Zeynep Doğuşlu) and Lale. On Nur’s wedding day, they blockade the house from the inside so that they cannot join the festivities outside, and Lale has a plan to drive her uncle’s car to Istanbul. Whether the plan is carried out provides much suspense as the film ends. The Political Film Society has nominated Mustang as best film on human rights of 2015. MH