Ok, who wants to live life behind bars? No, not prison. Well, not actual prison, just the metaphoric where your life is dictated by older people who “know better” and don’t especially care about your input. If life has taught us anything, it’s that prison is far superior to a loss of purity; now that’s a nightmare.
Five orphaned sisters (Günes Sensoy, Doga Zeynep Doguslu, Tugba Sunguroglu, Elit Iscan, Ilayda Akdogan) are celebrating the last day of school with a trip to the Black Sea. Don’t worry about telling them apart; Lale (Sensoy) is the only distinguishable one among them as she hasn’t reached puberty and has all the ideas (I’m a little disturbed by this combination – do Turkish women trade womanhood for independent thought? We know that’s not true). The girls spend part of their salt water fun playing “chicken” on the shoulders of male classmates. Naturally, a neighbor narcs on their sexual deviances.
(FWIW, my Turkish friend says that the portrayal of the teens as overly wild and sexual is inaccurate; the film itself works better for symbolic value rather than anything to be taken literally.)
Mustang has a real 1984 feel, where all people over the age of 30 can be assumed unsympathetic and part of the problem. For their crimes, the teen girls are sentenced to home arrest under the supervision of their heavy-handed uncle (Ayberk Pekcan). At that point, they are all on the purity/marriage tracts – no school, no phone, no internet, no fun, no unsupervised time away from the house, shapeless modest sack dresses to be worn before company at all times. When a Lale-inspired trip a soccer match is discovered, the adults double down – bars across the windows.
You can make any argument you want about cultural differences or preserving the virtue for these VERY young women, but this is the scene: the girls are locked in the house, they are not allowed friends or visitors, they are not going to school, they are only educated to develop “marriage” related skills and they they have next to no say on whom they wed or when they wed – well, at that point, you don’t have a virtue-protection racket any longer, you have a zoological breeding program. And that’s exactly what Mustang feels like.
Besides the obvious problems with the film, that the adults are all pretty much Nazis and all of the girls are too young for marriage (is this part correct? Do some Turkish cultures start marrying off daughters once they hit puberty?), one huge problem is that the girls themselves are hard to distinguish. We know them better by how they marry – Sonay, for instance, is the one who gets to marry for love because she screams bloody murder at having to marry the suitor who shows; the compromise is she has to wed, immediately, the guy she’s been sneaking off to see. (I see this as a minor concession at best; it matters not if you wed for love if you’re too young when you get sold down river.)
The best cringe-worthy moment in this gestapo-laden fun fest is when the in-laws from another family insist upon examining the sheets from the newly consummated marriage. The girl in question is forced to see a doctor when no blood is produced.
I know the West is free. Or freer. I know there are 
cultural differences that we have to respect. But this is wrong. We know it and the film knows it, and it obviously reflects a culture which puts more stock in purity than brain development for women. That is misogyny. I can’t think of a better example anywhere.
For all the conservative behavior in Mustang, religion plays no role. Not once is Islam mentioned, nor any other faith for that matter. There isn’t a scene of payer, nor any symbol of faith – I didn’t see any at least. Could be I just missed it. This is simply the way things are: faith or no, purity is the highest virtue a girl can have. And if that seems medieval, well, you’re going to root as hard as I did for Lale to escape her prison.
♪Mustang Lale, think I better slow your sisters down
Mustang Lale, gonna make sure you all wear a frown
You’ve been escaping out the back window
No! I’m gonna take away all fun you know
All you want to do is run around Lale, flit, Lale, flit
All you want to do is strump around Lale, taunt, Lale, taunt
Said all you want whore around Lale, tempt, Lale, tempt
Oh one of these early mornings, I’m going to sell you to the first man who offers♫
Rated PG-13, 97 Minutes
D: Deniz Gamze Ergüven
W: Deniz Gamze Ergüven, Alice Winocour
Genre: Teen prison camp
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Anybody who regrets marrying against her will
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Those who have successfully fooled themselves that arranged marriages work
♪ Parody inspired by “Mustang Sally”
