When, over the summer of 2021, there was a worldwide outcry against the possibility that women would no longer be allowed to attend school or do many of the other things they’d begun to be able to do after the American invasion twenty years earlier. The Taliban promised to be more liberal this time around. But of course, there’s been no evidence that that’s been the case so far. Ahmet Necdet Çupur’s film, Les Enfants Terribles, is a reminder that in the Middle East, the fact that girls are allowed to go to school in no way implies that they will in fact be able to go. The age old struggle between tradition, patriarchy and religion on the one hand, and modernization and personal freedom on the other, is alive and well, even in the more so-called advanced nations in the region.
Les Enfants Terribles is set in rural Turkey and follows the filmmaker’s family over the course of three years. The main characters are the filmmaker’s brother, Mahmut, who is struggling to figure out what to do with the 17 year-old he’s married, but is no longer interested in, and Zeynep, who desperately wants to leave home and carve out a life for herself. On the other hand, we find the father of the house, who becomes furious at the drop of a hat, shouting and threatening to expel or execute his children. His wife sits impassively, but is clearly on her husband’s side, believing there’s no particularly good reason for her daughter to leave their stultifying rural village.
The men have problems and are constrained by the system they were born into. But Mahmut, for example, is able to fly off to Kuwait for a job as a restaurant manager for extended periods of time. It may not be glamorous, but at least he can more or less come and go as he pleases. It is really the women we feel for in this film. Zeynep doesn’t dream of emigrating to New York or Los Angeles and becoming rich and famous. She doesn’t even dream of moving to the gulf, as her brother has. Her ambition is to move to Antakya, a town of less than half a million people 30 or so kilometers away. But her parents are reluctant to let her to pursue the higher education she seeks.
One of the most poignant episodes in this film is the stand-off between mother and daughter. Zeynep is harshly critical of her mother, who, she accuses of being completely ignorant and never having read a book in her life. The mother sits sheepishly, openly doubting whether her daughter could actually amount to anything. One need only focus on their eyes to understand what’s going on here. Zeynap’s eyes are sharp and, I think it’s fair to say, filled with hatred for the impassive and immovable figure of her mother, who’s eyes reveal the truth of Zeynap’s accusations. At various points in the film, including this one, Zeynep giggles childishly. But we understand that this is giggling in the face of something unimaginably awful. Her own parents have trapped her in a situation from which she may never escape. And the parents really are so ignorant that they cannot understand what their children want, and are very unlikely to ever change their minds. In consequence, the overarching mood of the lives of Zeynep and other like her is profound boredom. She and her siblings sit languidly around the family compound with very little to do and nothing much to hope for.
The film is heart-wrenching in its portrayal of ambitious youth struggling against inflexible tradition. And again, it is mostly the women who really suffer. Mahmut is married to a 17 year old, but, as mentioned, he’s no longer interested in her. He says that he made a mistake in marrying her and doesn’t want to be tied down to this ill-considered decision. His family and others in the village try to convince him to stick with her for both their sakes, but he’s not willing to listen. The result is that his teenage wife, as a possible divorcee, doesn’t have much of a future to look forward to. Perhaps, we hear, she’ll be given to some old man who won’t mind the fact that she’s divorced.
Les Enfants Terribles serves as a powerful reminder that for huge swaths of the population of the world, modernity and emancipation are still out of reach.