Film ReviewsUntamed
Jan 29, 2016 Anchorage Press
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Director Deniz Gamze Ergüven focuses her lens on the story of five sisters, orphaned a decade earlier, who are growing up in their uncle's house in a rural town in northern Turkey under the microscopic gaze of their grandmother. As the girls move toward adulthood, and traditions of arranged marriage are triggered for various reasons, the women have to make an incredibly difficult decisions. Mustang is Gamze Ergüven's debut film and a contender for the 2016 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar-not too shabby for this 37-year-old, Turkish-born and French-raised, female director.
Gamze Ergüven filters the lives of the five sisters through her own experiences. Although not an autobiographical film, the director draws on personal childhood memories and the collective cultural experience of Turkish women to explore what it means to be a woman in a country pulled in opposite directions by Westernization and traditions. Some say there are two Turkeys. The modern Turkey follows in the footsteps of the more progressive parts of its history and seeks to be a part of a globalized world, after all, Turkey gave women the right to vote almost a decade before France; the strict and conservative Turkey that holds narrowly-defined roles for women. To be born into a dichotomist Turkey and then immigrate to France and be part of social system that can provide women with wings with which to fly does something to a person, something good, as is evidenced by Gamze Ergüven's ability to create a work with international sensibilities and a well of deeply-rooted family and cultural values.
Gamze Ergüven's multiple filters allow her to create a film with universal appeal and one with which cross-cultural audiences can identify. Similarly to how the Iranian-American director of A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, Ana Lily Amirpour, brings a spaghetti-western sensibility to works rooted in non-western worlds, Gamze Ergüven channels the sensibility of Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides down to the sensual Lolita-ization of the young girls, in whole or parts. Even Gamze Ergüven's film title, "Mustang" evokes Wild West imagery of horses running wild in the Americas. She further reinforces this parallel throughout the film, setting the tone from the opening scene in which Lale (Günes Sensoy), the youngest of the siblings, and the other four prance home from school, with their long hair and youthful unruliness resembling mustangs running free. It is this innocent frolicking that gets them in trouble. As the film progresses it becomes apparent that innocence does not mean naiveté. As the grandmother and uncle try to curtail the girls' freedom and desire to individuate by building gates and fences, the girls are still able to find means of escape, even if for a moment.
Mustang flows at a nicely set pace, with a soundtrack that supports its twists and turns. More importantly, the film opened doors and minds of the cast of new-comers. Reportedly it took a while to find the right combination of young actresses, but once in place, they fit together like different parts of the same melody. The plot is complex-circular in some ways-but never fully because the paths the young women take as individuals have permanent and different trajectories, perhaps even away from the only home they've ever known, the comfort of each other. The precipitation with which things and circumstances change make it so Lale grows up overnight. Lale's jarring awakening may make viewers stress and care for her, but also hope, more than anything, that she remains untamed.
Mustang shows on Monday, Feb. 1 at 8 p.m. at Bear Tooth.
Gamze Ergüven filters the lives of the five sisters through her own experiences. Although not an autobiographical film, the director draws on personal childhood memories and the collective cultural experience of Turkish women to explore what it means to be a woman in a country pulled in opposite directions by Westernization and traditions. Some say there are two Turkeys. The modern Turkey follows in the footsteps of the more progressive parts of its history and seeks to be a part of a globalized world, after all, Turkey gave women the right to vote almost a decade before France; the strict and conservative Turkey that holds narrowly-defined roles for women. To be born into a dichotomist Turkey and then immigrate to France and be part of social system that can provide women with wings with which to fly does something to a person, something good, as is evidenced by Gamze Ergüven's ability to create a work with international sensibilities and a well of deeply-rooted family and cultural values.
Gamze Ergüven's multiple filters allow her to create a film with universal appeal and one with which cross-cultural audiences can identify. Similarly to how the Iranian-American director of A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, Ana Lily Amirpour, brings a spaghetti-western sensibility to works rooted in non-western worlds, Gamze Ergüven channels the sensibility of Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides down to the sensual Lolita-ization of the young girls, in whole or parts. Even Gamze Ergüven's film title, "Mustang" evokes Wild West imagery of horses running wild in the Americas. She further reinforces this parallel throughout the film, setting the tone from the opening scene in which Lale (Günes Sensoy), the youngest of the siblings, and the other four prance home from school, with their long hair and youthful unruliness resembling mustangs running free. It is this innocent frolicking that gets them in trouble. As the film progresses it becomes apparent that innocence does not mean naiveté. As the grandmother and uncle try to curtail the girls' freedom and desire to individuate by building gates and fences, the girls are still able to find means of escape, even if for a moment.
Mustang flows at a nicely set pace, with a soundtrack that supports its twists and turns. More importantly, the film opened doors and minds of the cast of new-comers. Reportedly it took a while to find the right combination of young actresses, but once in place, they fit together like different parts of the same melody. The plot is complex-circular in some ways-but never fully because the paths the young women take as individuals have permanent and different trajectories, perhaps even away from the only home they've ever known, the comfort of each other. The precipitation with which things and circumstances change make it so Lale grows up overnight. Lale's jarring awakening may make viewers stress and care for her, but also hope, more than anything, that she remains untamed.
Mustang shows on Monday, Feb. 1 at 8 p.m. at Bear Tooth.