Mustang Movie Essay

“Mustang”, the highly expressive debut feature by the French-Turkish filmmaker, Deniz Gamze Erguven, was attractively executed through an unobtrusive direction and graceful acting. The screenplay, co-written by Erguven and Alice Winocour who directed the audacious “Augustine” three years ago, was pretty straightforward, depicting the lives of five teen orphaned sisters who are suddenly placed in the local ‘market’ by their grandmother and the uncle who raised them, awaiting the first chance to get married. The film starts on the last day of school in an ultra-conservative rural village of Turkey. The sisters are sad to say goodbye to their teacher who will be transferred to Istanbul the following year. The day is sunny and we can almost feel the scents

Arriving home, they find the uptight grandmother acting furious, saying the whole village is talking about them because they were rubbing themselves on the boys during their little adventure on the beach. The afflicted grandmother and the stern uncle take security measures to avoid risks, so, higher walls are built, iron bars cover the windows, and the door is tightly bolted in order to confine them home until their marriage. The word is spread out to the village and the suitors arrive one by one to respectfully ask their hands, not before a virginity check-up is made to assure that the girls are conveniently pure. Meanwhile, the sisters disobey the orders, managing to escape to go to a soccer match. Their adventurer spirit wouldn’t be enough if they didn’t come across with an amiable van’s driver called Yasmin, who helped them getting to the stadium, and later on, befriends with the youngest sister and narrator,