Mustang (Deniz Gamze Ergüven, 2015)

Cast: Günes Sensoy, Doga Zeynep Doguslu, Tugba Sunguroglu, Elit Iscan, Ilayda Akdogan, Nihal G. Koldas, Ayberk Pekcan, Bahar Kerimoglu, Burak Yigit, Erol Afsin, Suzanne Marrot, Serife Kara, Aynur Komecoglu, Sevval Aydin. Screenplay: Deniz Gamze Ergüven, Alice Winocour. Cinematography: David Chizallet, Ersin Gok. Production design: Turker Isci. Film editing: Mathilde Van de Moortel. Music: Warren Ellis.

The sheer energy that bursts from the screen as the five girls in Mustang play and rebel is the film's greatest strength. It's a story about five Turkish girls in a small village, orphaned sisters raised by their grandmother and an uncle, whose joie de vivre gets them into trouble when a busybody neighbor sees them playing with some male schoolmates, celebrating the arrival of the end of term, and interprets their horseplay as shamefully erotic. The girls are swiftly imprisoned in their home, which becomes a "school for wives," as the youngest girl, Lale (Günes Sensoy), puts it in her occasional voiceover commentary. Eventually, two of the girls are married off, one commits suicide, and two escape to Istanbul, which evokes for them what Moscow did for the sisters in Chekhov's play. The casting is the chief marvel of the film -- none of the girls is a professional actress and they aren't really siblings -- and director and co-writer Deniz Gamze Ergüven makes the most of it. She's less successful at handling the more sensational elements of the plot, the molestation of some of the girls and the suicide, which are treated a little too obliquely. The film was not received well in the Turkey of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but since it was co-produced by France, Germany, and Turkey, it was eligible to be submitted as the French contender for the Oscar, and earned a nomination.    

Hell or High Water (David Mackenzie, 2016)

Jeff Bridges, Margaret Bowman, and Gil Birmingham in Hell or High Water

Marcus Hamilton: Jeff Bridges
Toby Howard: Chris Pine
Tanner Howard: Ben Foster
Alberto Parker: Gil Birmingham
Elsie: Dale Dickey
Debbie Howard: Marin Ireland
Jenny Ann: Katy Mixon
Justin Howard: John Paul Howard
T-Bone Waitress: Margaret Bowman

Director: David Mackenzie
Screenplay: Taylor Sheridan
Cinematography: Giles Nuttgens
Production design: Tom Duffield
Music: Nick Cave, Warren Ellis

Hell or High Water has a resonance in Trumpian America, with its portrayal of a kind of rural desperation that echoes the era of Bonnie and Clyde, when robbing banks was seen as a kind of stick-it-to-the-man activity, a way of getting back at an economic system that allowed no other way of breaking a cycle. As Toby Howard puts it, "I've been poor my whole life, like a disease passing from generation to generation." Toby enlists his ex-con brother, Tanner, in a scheme to rob the small-town branches of the fictional Texas Midland Bank to build up enough cash to pay off the reverse mortgage that threatens the foreclosure of their recently dead mother's ranch, and then to put the property in trust -- with the same bank -- as a guarantee of a better future for Toby's sons. He is, in short, buying off the bank with the bank's money. Given that the Howard brothers have nothing to lose, it's a risk they think worth taking. On the other hand, there is the law to contend with, in the form of Texas Ranger Marcus Hamilton, just days away from a retirement he dreads. Hamilton, too, has nothing to lose, which means he doesn't mind dragging along his partner, Alberto Parker, on an pursuit that Parker thinks is absurd. It's a film of beautiful performances, not only another laurel for Jeff Bridges, but also a potential career-maker for Ben Foster and a chance for Chris Pine to show that he's not just another pretty face -- he grunges up well. The West Texas setting -- though the film was shot just across the border in eastern New Mexico -- is exploited skillfully, with deft touches like the frequent billboards advertising ways to get out of debt and the moribund small towns that cause Parker to ask, "Do you want to live here? Got an old hardware store that charges twice what Home Depot does, one restaurant with a rattlesnake for a waitress." The film also plays on the Texan love of guns when the robbers discover that the patrons of the banks are taking full advantage of the state's concealed-carry laws. Hamilton also echoes the region's casual racism, perhaps ironically, with his digs at his partner's American Indian heritage, though the point is made without irony when an old man is surprised that the robbers "ain't Mexican." Hell or High Water perhaps doesn't reach the elegiac heights of No Country for Old Men (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, 2007, but in its simpler, less florid way it's an equally worth companion in the neo-Western genre.