film fatales #49: mustang (deniz gamze ergüven, 2015)

Deniz Gamze Ergüven graduated from film school in 2006. Nine years later, Mustang became her feature debut as a director. Of this time, she has said, "If I had the body and the voice of an alpha male, it would be easier. It took nine years from leaving film school until Mustang was screened at Cannes, and those years were demoralising. It's difficult not to be affected. You work for the minimum, to have your roof and four walls, so you can write. It's not super fun." Because of this, or despite this, Mustang is a confident film, one that won numerous awards, at Cannes and elsewhere, and was nominated for a Best Foreign Language Oscar. The performances by the five young girl leads are very good ... they interact quite naturally as sisters, even though only one of them had acted before. I usually give credit to the director when that happens.

The girls aren't always recognizable as individuals. though ... I kept forgetting which one was which. (Ergüven has referred to them as "one body with five heads".) They made a bigger impression as a group. The best scenes are when the sisters are alone together. The narrative is dramatic, unflinching in exposing the oppressions of patriarchy at the core of Turkish society. It wasn't unanimously praised in Turkey. It is noteworthy that  the director was born in Turkey but raised in France. The film was submitted to the Oscars as a French film.

The score by Warren Ellis has gotten much praise; I confess I don't remember it, good or bad. What I will always remember is those five sisters. Ergüven tells the story solely from their perspective, and it's effective. The film is often compared to The Virgin Suicides, which makes surface sense but perhaps exaggerates the two films' similarities. (In an excellent analysis of the two movies, Beth Winchester writes, "This comparison isn’t unfounded, but to compare the two is an easy option and coasts over not just the importance of the factors that make them similar, but the crucial differences that ultimately make them two distinct stories rather than an original story and a rehash that came 15 years later."). #852 on the They Shoot Pictures, Don't They list of the top 1000 films of the 21st century.

(Explanation of the Film Fatales Series.)