MUSTANG is a must see.

Nominated for this year’s Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, MUSTANG is a magnitude seven cinema experience, quite possibly THE Go To, Go Girl movie of the year.

MUSTANG starts in the sublimely sultry, sea salty beginning of summer, where, on the Black Sea shore of a village in the north of Turkey, Lale and her four sisters, at the cessation of school, innocently play with boys.

The supposed sluttishness of their games causes a scandal and the “girls just want to have fun” vibe curdles into “girls should never have none”. The family home slowly turns into a prison, classes on housework and cooking replace school, and marriages begin to be arranged. The five sisters are given gynaecological goings over to verify their virginity and are placed on the meat market, driven by dowry and antediluvian ideas that dash desire and freedom.Orphaned, the girls were doing just fine growing up with Granny, but misogynist macho-avuncular, Erol, perceives their free spiritedness as promiscuity which must be punished and purified by hastily arranged marriages.

The title, MUSTANG, comes from a type of wild horse that perfectly symbolises the five spirited and untamable heroines. The story moves fast, galloping forward with an equine energy.

MUSTANG can be viewed on so many levels because it has been made with so many layers. It is a coming of age movie, a siege movie, a heist movie and a jail break caper, wrapped in an acute examination of a society that reduces women to baby-making machines, housebound, harangued and held hostage in domestic subjugation.

Strikingly directed by Deniz Gamze Erguven, from her script written in collaboration with Alice Winocour, MUSTANG boasts a beautiful Warren Ellis score, and dazzling cinematography by David Chizallet.

But it’s the five fabulous females that give the film its finesse, its feistiness, and fulsomeness.

MUSTANG is a real Turkish delight.