Mustang,
directed by Deniz Gamze Erguven
(PG-13, 97 minutes)
In a nicely furnished house "1,000 kilometers" from Istanbul, five sisters are being held prisoner. They didn't come straight home after school let out for the summer, but splashed in the Black Sea with boys. A nosy neighbor informed on them to their religiously conservative Uncle Erol (Ayberk Pekcan).
They are whipped by their grandmother (Nihal G. Koldas) before being stripped of their cellphones, computers and any clothes considered immodest. Keys are turned, windows barred, and school replaced by cooking lessons. They are hauled off to a clinic so their virginity can be documented.
The girls -- Lale (Gunes Sensoy), Nur (Doga Zeynep Doguslu ), Selma (Tugba Sunguroglu), Ece (Elit Iscan) and Sonay (Ilayda Akdogan) -- are close enough in age that they might all be married off within a couple of years. Erol sees them as assets he must protect, though the aunts who train them in domestic arts have some empathy.
Like the girls of The Virgin Suicides or the boys of The Wolfpack, these sisters strive for release from their circumscription. Sonay, the oldest, is married off against her will, but when Selma balks at the prospect of an arranged suitor she's allowed to marry her boyfriend, with whom she has been having a dangerous physical affair. The others watch and wait with various degrees of horror and anticipation.
The youngest and most spirited sister, Lale, has a spark that must be extinguished -- she's the mustang that must be broken -- to fulfill what her uncle sees as her destiny. As her sisters' fates are revealed, she's plotting a way out.
Director Deniz Gamze Erguven and co-writer Alice Winocour allow every character, even cruel Erol, a recognizable measure of humanity, and the relationship between the older women of the house and the sisters is complicated and tender. But the best part is how Erguven watches these lithe young animals who, with the high spirits of youth, lounge and roughhouse with one another. There's a sweet beauty in their play and real steel in their determination to get themselves free.
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MovieStyle on 04/15/2016