Phannatiq LFW Feb 2017
It's International Women's Day. I am sure that by now you have read everything about the protests and even the one day strike. I did not work today and avoided shopping (but I had to buy myself some flowers!) as this had been suggested was a way to demonstrate solidarity with those striking, in that women constitute a good 60% of the overall shoppers.
Appropriately for today, I watched the beautiful Mustang (2015), a film by the Turkish director Deniz Gamze Ergüven. It's a film that has received several prizes and award nominations, in Cannes, in Toronto. It was even shortlisted for an Academy Award. IMDb has included it in the list of films to watch to celebrate International Women's Day and, as I was scrolling through the list, it caught my attention.
Mustang is about five teenage sisters who have lost their parents and live with their conservative uncle and grandmother in a village in Northern Turkey. The film begins with them playing a game with boys on the beach, in which they are carried by the boys on their shoulders, and because of that game they are severely reprimanded by their elders, who interpret the game as being obscene and sexual - the girls allegedly having been 'pleasuring themselves' on the neck of the boys.
As the story develops we see the girls, no longer allowed to go to school, being groomed for marriage. The youngest, Lale, is the most defiant of the lot and is eager to escape, even learning to drive, surreptitiously, and she is barely ten! She dreams of going to Istanbul, the big city, where her favourite teacher lives.
Eventually, she manages to get away, together with one of the sisters (two have been married off, another one has committed suicide). The two of them arrive in Istanbul and head for Lale's former teacher's house, where they are comforted. The film ends with that scene of Lale flying into her teacher's arms.
The story is simple and quite tragic, yet its message is not one of hopelessness. The girls are magnificent, attempting to rebel, yet they are suppressed by a patriarchal society which regards them as inferior to men and unworthy. Traditional mores are oppressive and the girls are, one by one, broken by the injustice of it all, except for Lale, who is determined to win her place in the sun.
The film is very nuanced in the way it tells its story, it shows scenes of happiness, of bonding, even at events such as the marriages of two of the sisters, as well as having scenes of extreme violence. The sisters are absolutely beautiful, their long hair untamed, never covering their heads, often not tying their hair, always defiantly, at least indoors, wearing shorts, even bikinis, rather than the 'grey sacs' their grandmother wants them to put on. They play imaginative and poignant games with each other which betray their extreme longing for freedom - there is a wonderful moment, showing them playing in bed, when they are grounded at home, and they are pretending to be swimming underwater, catching a seashell which they listen to.
The cinematography is beautiful, so is the acting. Only one of the girls had acted before, but they were all able to dive into the story, giving the best of themselves in their performances.
The film was bitterly criticised in Turkey, where many disliked this portrayal of backward village life and felt it tarnished the official image of a modern, European Turkey. In an interview given to Rachel Cooke, of The Observer, Ergüven comments on the reality of living in Turkey today, under Erdoğan:
"The way he [Erdoğan] speaks: he makes them [women] fragile with his messages, whether subliminal or explicit. There is a certain way, he says, of being a woman: you have to be a mother and at home, and that’s all. When you see a man, you should blush and look down. It’s like something from the middle ages. The subtext is that women are only seen as sexual. That’s why they must cover every inch of their skin. This is dangerous because it generates more violence against them, it makes it OK for men to act like assailants. Rapes happen everywhere, but in Turkey women come out on to the streets to protest because such attacks only seem to echo what the government is saying".
I was immensely moved by this beautiful film. I hope more women, everywhere in the world, will watch it, savour it and fight against the patriarchal values it denounces.
Happy International Women's Day!
Modelling Phannatiq
(The photos in this post are from a recent LFW event at which I modelled Phannatiq, clothes designed by Anna Skodbo. I love that Skodbo is never prescriptive about what older women should wear, nor does she design for only one size and shape)
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