IN Turkish actress Deniz Gamze Erguven’s writing (in collaboration with French writer Alice Winocour) and directing debut, five sisters whose mother has died leaving them in the care of grandmother, confront a traditional attitude toward growing up in a village that modern attitudes have not penetrated.

When grandmother sees them splashing in the sea after summer holidays begin, the house becomes a prison with steel-barred windows.

Growing through that exciting stage when bodies change shape, when new feelings bring problems that a mother’s guidance might help them understand but which grandmother is adamantly refusing to countenance, when boys are more than merely other youngsters of similar age, the sisters follow individual paths at the hands of the village’s older women.

The oldest gets married to a man she doesn’t know. The middle one avoids pregnancy not by abstinence but by the other foolproof method. The youngest, Lale, is the film’s true heroine, silently amassing what she needs to guide her sisters out of their confinement.

The film makes no comment about Islam. The adult male characters conform to the behaviours that the women direct. Yet it’s not a chick flick. It’s an unexpected delight.

At Palace Electric