Mustang: film review

by Nina, Elisa, Roxane & Léna

The movie we are going to present is entitled “Mustang”. « Mustang » is a Turkish drama film. It was directed by Deniz Gange Ergüyen and released in 2015. It is starring Güneş Şensoy as Lale, Doğa Doğuşlu as Nur, Elit İşcan as Ece, Tuğba Sunguroğlu as Selma and İlayda Akdoğan as Sonay. The film is inspired by the director’s personal life. It was selected for the Festival de Cannes in 2015 and it was awarded 4 Césars in 2016 in addition to many other awards.

The film is set in a small Turkish village and the story takes place nowadays. It revolves around Lale, the youngest of the children. The film is about five sisters who start off being free and end up being completely deprived of their freedom just because they were seen playing with boys. The family house turns into a prison, school is replaced by cooking lessons and chores, and marriages are arranged. We get to see the girls grow up and get tougher as their lives become harder. Soon it is no longer their respect for their family that drives them but their desire for freedom.

It allows us to compare women’s situation in Turkey to ours in Western Europe. We are very admirative of the strength and bravery of the women we have seen. The story is really catching and we grow to really care for the characters. Our favourite moment is when the girls decide to go out to see a football game without their uncle’s permission, because the aunts are doing all they can to keep the men from discovering where the sisters are. In that moment, their love for the girls surpasses their conservative beliefs.

The only negative aspect we found is that some parts of the movie can be a little confusing because the characters are hard to keep up with.

To sum up, this film is a great way to realize the luck we have as women in Western European countries, and it is a true tribute to Turkish women. We would highly recommend this film to anyone interested in the place of women in society, or simply to anyone who wants to watch a story about sisterhood, love, and bravery.

A motif is a repeated narrative element that has a deeper meaning in a story. It can be different things like physical items, colors, or symbols. In Mustang, there are lots of patterns but one that particularly stands out is the sisters’ long and voluminous hair. First, the motif appears in the title: the mustang is a horse, and his mane is reminding us of the girls’ hair. We can therefore compare the indomitable temperament of this horse breed to the girls’ temperament. We get to see the girls’ hair loose every time they are free. The motif of the hair is present in numerous scenes, for instance, in the beginning of the film, when their uncle gets angry, grabbing the girls’ hair is a way for him to control them, to deprive them of their freedom.

It is also worth mentioning that when Lale makes a doll using her hair to put in her bed before she escapes, cutting her hair is a way for her to get freedom, which surprisingly makes sense because in Turkish culture, women are considered beautiful when they have long hair, so when Lale is cutting hers, she is rebelling against the status quo.

We also noticed that their grandmother, who is conflicted between protecting the sisters and standing by her very traditional and old-fashioned values, is just as deprived of freedom as her granddaughters, and the motif of the hair is used to show that: her hair is tied up all day in a bun and she only lets it loose right before sleeping.