Mustang

Children at play, happenstance and hijinks emboldening hilarity, the joys of youth spontaneously free-flowing, the unexpected and the ahistorical flourishing as they bumble, the beach magnetically galvanizing the zeal, time to excel at discovery and exploration, embrace what's new through awe and fascination, dive in and test the waters, let the ultrabliss cascade.

But the elders, the patriarchs and those who fear them, find such joyous acts of emancipated abandon troublesome and unproductive, the youths described previously being 5 young girls, young sisters, one perhaps with brilliant, laughing eyes and plump, matt cheeks (Albertine), their village obsessed with strict definitions of the ladylike, coldhearted calculated restrictions which severely limit astronomical potentialities.

Soon they're being taught to be domestic servants while being married-off, one by one, the crime, exceedingly enjoying life, the punishment, squabbling in the shadows forever after.

Sure, it's nice when food is prepared for you, but if you're not prepared to cook the same, there isn't much point in benefitting from the enriching nutrient intake.

Sure, sometimes conversations with opposite genders seem bizarre and incomprehensible, but a collage of masculine and feminine ideas blended within a cultural and political fabric makes life dynamic and unpredictable, makes beautiful cities like Montréal, and is an integral component of vibrant contagious cohesivity.

Gender balance you know, it's not such a bad thing, you can refine some remarkable synergies, it works both ways.

Mustang examines sheer patriarchal oppression and the ways in which obsessions with ruthlessly employed conceptions of virtue and purity, even respect, can asininely suffocate blossoming imaginations.

Its fictional portrayal of incarcerated curiosity juxtaposes the harsh and the tender with disparate shocking alarm.

It's not that concepts like virtue and morality are necessarily threatening, it's only when a specific virtuous concept is enforced dogmatically, obstinately applied to each and every situation, like residential schools or Nazi Germany, that it dissolves its links with the good, and malevolently functions as condemnation incarnate.

You need rules in order to succeed in many domains, and if everyone is constantly subverting everything management decides it's difficult to accomplish anything.

But if management decides something and a situation arises which organically challenges that decision and they sharply suppress the challenge similar problems can arise.

You can be disciplined and successful while remaining young at heart.

Hopefully that's the life awaiting Lale (Günes Sensoy) as she leaves for Istanbul, taking a mature risk to thwart imposed maturity, relaxed in her liberation, ready to take on the new.