Mustang

This Turkish countryside version of Girls Just Wanna Have Fun is an obvious bet for festival certainty, perhaps just a little more insidious in its attempt to induce obligatory outrage in the viewer. Casting universal beauties as five sisters under the weight of oppressive traditions and exposing them constantly throughout the film is really just a sticky plan for ingratiating themselves with the widest audience, in which they arouse justified indignation at the injustice done to these damsels in distress. It's a primitive approach, and there's not much else to latch onto in the film, as the characters are textbook and the direction doesn't know how to work with space, no matter how simple the area of a single house is. (2016.07.12)

The film revolves around five teenage sisters who, after a minor transgression, face house arrest, from which they can only be released by getting married with all due propriety. The question is whether they are not just going to another prison. As a Central European, I was quite enticed by the theme. I don't know much about the Turkish situation, but I was slightly taken aback by situations like when one of the girls shot herself, and the family barely mourned her, let alone softened their approach towards the remaining imprisoned sisters. It was as if nothing had happened and things stayed the same. Mustang is all about the desire for freedom and liberty in an age when everyone has the right to it. Not, apparently, young women in the more rural areas of Turkey, which have not yet emerged from almost medieval customs and traditions. It is a more than decently crafted story with a likable five girls, and it is worth watching. (2020.05.08)

(50th KVIFF) One of the best three films I’ve seen this year in the Karlovy Vary Film Festival. I’m quite surprised at the complaints that it is emotional blackmail. I didn’t feel at all that the director, in any part of the entire film, was trying to emotionally blackmail or manipulate me. Mustang addresses a very similar topic as last year’s Stations of the Cross: the consequences that the education in a traditional religious society has on young women. Last year, Brüggemann was sharper and more uncompromising, going straight for the jugular. In comparison, Ergüven’s film is more accessible, lighter, and lot sexier, too. But I don’t think that’s a reason to automatically write it off as a disingenuous agreeable pose. Not every festival film addressing serious issues really needs to look like having been made with a cheap camera and static shots, with a protagonist staring at the wall for long times and speaking in heavy philosophical rejoinders, or being silent. The first half is almost unexpectedly funny, considering the theme. But then the plot thickens, yet even during the most intense moments, when the protagonists are suffering the most, I didn’t feel that the director was exploiting their situation beyond the good taste in order to manipulate the public. Or, at least in my case, it wasn’t catastrophically successful enough to give me the impression that such was her intention. The ending, IMHO, is closer to a quality tense thriller than a tearjerker. 90% (2015.07.11)

An incomprehensibly medieval theme presented through the lens of a modern liberal film that sweetly makes its socio-critical substance accessible even to those completely ignorant of the Christian West. Beautifully shot, without unnecessary exaggerations and sentimentality, but also with a striking emotional distance and in some moments with a style that resembles a cheap educational semi-documentary rather than an artistically laden festival drama (see the opening on the beach). But what bothers me more, and why I don't give even a lenient four stars, is the fact that the script fails to establish almost any positive relationship between me and the main characters, because while I was shaking my head at how outdated and dictatorial the treatment of innocent free people can still be, their specific fate was felt somehow completely irrelevant, which shouldn’t be the case, especially for a film of this kind. 70% (2016.01.05)

A classic festival stinker - over-done form, absence of any finer finesse, two-dimensional characters, forced twists, clumsy changes in storytelling tone, towards the end unbearably mushy and weepy... it reminds of an attempt to impress civilized Europeans with the cruel traditions of rural Turkey, which is portrayed here for the most part as an aggressive (incestuous) prison. I'm not saying there's no rational basis for it, but the film absolutely can't be believed. Extortion festival HLP with all afflictions... #kviff2015 (2015.07.07)