Mustang (film)

Mustang
Film poster
Directed by	Deniz Gamze Ergüven
Produced by	Charles Gillibert
Written by	Deniz Gamze Ergüven Alice Winocour
Starring	Güneş Şensoy
Music by	Warren Ellis
Cinematography	David Chizallet Ersin Gok
Edited by	Mathilde Van de Moortel
Distributed by	Ad Vitam[1]
Release dates	19 May 2015 (2015-05-19) (Cannes)[2] 17 June 2015 (2015-06-17) (France)
Running time	97 minutes[3]
Country	France Turkey Germany
Language	Turkish
Budget	€1.3 million[4]
Box office	$2.3 million [5]

Mustang is a 2015 internationally co-produced drama film directed by Turkish-born and French-raised film director Deniz Gamze Ergüven. The film is set in a remote Turkish village (Inebolu, Kastamonu) and depicts life of five young orphaned sisters and challenges they face growing up as girls in a conservative society.^[6] The event that triggers the family backlash against the five sisters at the beginning of the film is based on Ergüven's personal life.^[7]

It was screened in the Directors' Fortnight section at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival^[8][9] where it won the Europa Cinemas Label Award.^[10][11] Mustang is the first feature film directed by Deniz Gamze Ergüven.^[12] It won the 2015 Lux Prize. It was selected to be screened in the Special Presentations section of the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.^[13] The film was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 88th Academy Awards.^[14] It was also nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film.^[15]

Plot

The film starts with Lale, the youngest of the five sisters and the protagonist, bidding an emotional farewell at school to her female teacher, who is moving to Istanbul. The sisters decide to walk home instead of taking a van to enjoy the sunny day. Along the way, they play in the water at the beach with their classmates. For one game, they sit on boys' shoulders and try to knock each other off. When they reach home, their grandmother scolds and hits them for their inappropriate contact with boys. Their uncle Erol is equally furious. From then on, the girls are kept from leaving the house, even for school.

The sisters feel stifled in their home as their grandmother tries to make them suitable for marriage. When in public they must now dress in drab, conservative clothing. Instead of attending school, they must stay home, where they are taught how to cook, clean and sew by their female relatives. Even so, the oldest sister, Sonay, sneaks out occasionally to meet her lover, and Lale looks for various ways to escape.

Lale, who loves football, is forbidden from watching the finals with her uncle and his male friends. When men are forbidden from attending the next match because they stormed the field in the previous one, she resolves to go. She’s informed by a friend that the girls in the village are going together on a bus. The sisters, who are happy for an opportunity to leave the house, sneak out of the house with Lale. When they miss the bus, they hitch a ride with a passing truck driver, Yasin, who helps them catch up to it. They’re ecstatic in the exuberant atmosphere of the all-female crowd cheering for their team. Back home, their aunt catches a glimpse of them at the match on TV, just as their uncle and other village men are about to tune in. To prevent the men from finding out, she and her relatives cut the house's, and then the whole village's electricity.

When the girls return, their grandmother decides to start marrying the sisters off. They’re taken to town, ostensibly "to get lemonade", which is actually an opportunity to show them off to potential suitors. Soon enough, a suitor and his family arrive to meet them. Sonay vows to only marry her lover and refuses to meet the prospective suitor and his family. Selma is sent instead and becomes engaged. Sonay gets engaged a short while later to her lover. At the two sisters' joint wedding, Sonay is clearly happy while Selma is not. On the morning after her wedding, Selma's in-laws come to view the bed sheets in a traditional ritual to establish that Selma was a virgin before her wedding night. Because there is no blood on the sheet, her in-laws take her to a physician to have her virginity tested.

Next in line for marriage is Ece. It’s revealed that her uncle is sexually abusing her at night. In Lale’s words, she starts acting “dangerously.” When the three remaining girls stop with their uncle near a bank, Ece invites a boy she doesn’t know to have sex with her in their car. She makes jokes at the lunch table, inciting loud laughs from her sisters, and is told to go to her room, where she shoots herself and dies. The surviving sisters and their family attend the funeral.

Now it is just the two youngest sisters, Nur and Lale, at home. Lale continues sneaking out. On one impulsive attempt to walk to Istanbul alone she is encountered by Yasin, the truck driver, who is kind to her. At Lale's request, he later teaches her how to drive. When she is caught on the way back into her house, the house is again reinforced to try to make it impossible for them to leave.

It becomes evident that the uncle starts abusing Nur as well and that their grandmother knows about it. She says that now it is time for her to be married off. Though she is young, she is found a suitor and engaged to be married. On the night of Nur's wedding, Lale convinces her to resist, and the girls bar themselves inside the house while the whole wedding party is outside, much to the embarrassment of their family. As the wedding party disperses, their uncle violently tries to get inside. Lale finds the phone hidden in a cupboard and plugs it in to call Yasin for help. The girls gather up money and a few supplies, grab the uncle's car keys, and sneak out of the house. They manage to escape in the car, crashing it close to their house. They hide and wait for Yasin, who picks them up and takes them to the local bus station. The girls take the bus to Istanbul, where they find their former teacher, who greets them warmly.

Cast

• Güneş Şensoy as Lale
• Doğa Doğuşlu as Nur
• Elit İşcan as Ece
• Tuğba Sunguroğlu as Selma
• İlayda Akdoğan as Sonay
• Nihal Koldaş as the grandmother
• Ayberk Pekcan as Erol
• Erol Afşin as Osman

Reception

Mustang has received widespread acclaim from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 96%, based on 69 reviews, with an average rating of 8.2/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Mustang delivers a bracing — and thoroughly timely — message whose power is further bolstered by the efforts of a stellar ensemble cast."^[16] Metacritic reports a score of 83 out of 100, based on 27 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".^[17]

Accolades

See also

• List of submissions to the 88th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film
• List of French submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film

References

External links

• Mustang at the Internet Movie Database
• Mustang on Facebook (US)