I wasn’t sure what to expect from a film with a title like Girl With No Mouth (2019). It sounds like something from exploitation cinema, akin to They Call Her One Eye (1973) or even some kind of body horror. Given that this film is directed by Turkish director Can Evrenol – who brought us the lurid, squalid terrors of Baskin (2015) – it seemed even more likely that this newer film would wind up being horror, or sci-fi, or something similar. Almost needless to say, given this preamble, Girl With No Mouth has little to nothing to do with exploitation cinema, or horror. Nor, even once the dystopian setting is explained, does it feel particularly like a dystopian film either. I sincerely hope that neither the title nor the lack of post-apocalyptic sprawl (nor the presence of a talented horror director, for that matter) will mean this film lands with the wrong audiences, because that would be a shame: this is a quirky, often sensitive adventure movie, an oddly warm take on a dystopian setting where the dystopia could almost be totally excised. Let me explain.
The post-apocalyptic setting is explained first and foremost by some on-screen text, which tells us that the usual things have been going on which bring a situation from pre- to post-apocalypse: foreign wars, a corrupt, powerful Corporation which has foisted itself upon Turkey, and a ‘great explosion’, which seems to be behind a spate of birth defects. In a remote house, little Perihan (Elif Sevinç) lives alone with her father (Sermet Yesil). Peri herself has a birth defect – yep, she’s the girl with no mouth, a facial deformity which she hides beneath a red face covering. Her father has taught her three key rules to keep her safe: never cross the river; keep your bag with you; run if you see people. This is advice which she can soon only partly follow thanks to the arrival of Corporation employee, uncle Kemal (Mehmet Yilmaz Ak). He warns her father that the Corporation have a master plan to impose a new ‘peace’; it involves purging those with defects like the one Peri has. Baba has the option to hand her over, and save himself. Needless to say, this he cannot do.
Peri has to flee across the river which she was warned about, but she cannot avoid other people for long. Luckily for her, it’s a group of children, the ‘Pirates’, all of whom have some kind of physical defect themselves. Now a team, those who wish to impose this new peace – led by Peri’s uncle – soon pursue them out of their hiding place, forcing them to head for the so-called ‘Lost City’ to find safety.
The plot here is a fairly simple one, and facial deformities notwithstanding (the film stretches itself very thinly when it tries to show us its SFX) this could take place anywhere in time or in any place where children are unprotected and so must look after themselves. I mean, Peter Pan, duh. One of the first films which came to mind, albeit minus the magic realism aspect, was Tigers Are Not Afraid (2017), a very recent film where, largely, the same thing happens: a little girl flees into an alien, contested space where she needs the friendship and trust of a group of other rootless children, themselves the targets of a group of corrupt, cruel adults. There are countless other films where children’s friendship and adults’ wickedness are brought into conflict. Do we really need the dystopian aspect here? Well, it’s an attempt to add interest to to the framing narrative. It also creates a reason why each child is deficient in a sense, whether sight, speech, smell or hearing, which adds to the notion that, by working together, they create a unanimous whole – but the wicked uncle, the unfair fight, the chase – these are as old as the hills. In terms of how the setting looks, much of it is actually sylvan, pleasantly green rather than Fallout 3. When the children move on, they do encounter ruined buildings, but it’s not in some towering metropolis and still looks rather gentle.
So much for that. But there are some real strengths here, things which make this film an engaging watch. Evrenol knows how to direct, and he certainly knows how to frame a shot, pick a location, and cast a film: Girl With No Mouth belongs to its young cast, and full credit to Elif Sevinç who plays her part non-verbally, but still manages a convincing, often touching performance – as do the rest of the ‘Pirates’, and there are some very warm scenes; a blind boy reading to his friends from a book which is anything but the history of Pirate exploits which he’s ad-libbing establishes a nice dynamic between them all. Likewise, nice guys need a good foil, and Mehmet Yilmaz Ak is a solid villain, just about preventing himself from spilling over into melodrama in places but full of menace elsewhere, a brooding figure who adds just enough tension to the film. By the end, despite the film’s low budget never quite disappearing from view, I was on board with the film’s industry, economy and raw sort of charm. Sure, it’s not the first of its kind, nor will it be the last, but it does have value; its moral is simple and straightforward, but it’s an adventure story with enough attention paid to key elements to mean it still has plenty to recommend it. Can Evrenol is showing versatility here, which is cool; I half wish he could be versatile on that title…