Closing Night: ‘Mustache’ – 24th Annual San Diego Asian Film Festival Recap

Editors note: a “bildungsroman,” according to Oxford, is a novel dealing with one person’s formative years or spiritual education. This term could potentially apply to films as well.

Puberty and facial hair. Growing up and self-discovery. High school and the crippling anxiety of having to talk to people of the opposite gender. These are just three of the foundational pairs that constitute what it means to fight through the gauntlet that is male adolescence, and what are potentially the typical ingredients for a bildungsroman starring a young man. “Mustache” is no exception, much to its own chagrin.

Directed by Imran J. Khan, “Mustache” follows Ilyas, a 13-year-old Pakistani-American played by Atharv Verma, whose internal conflict in attempting to grasp puberty and his place in the world is represented through his “peach fuzz” mustache. The film begins with Ilyas in an Islamic private school, right before a fight between him and another student gets him sent to a public high school.  What ensues are a slew of classic “fish out of water” moments, girl troubles, helicopter parents, a “nobody understands me” mentality, an “all is lost” moment, sprinkle in a “this is who I am, take it or leave it” monologue or action, and conclude with the protagonist understanding that their own destiny is in their hands and not their community. That’s “Mustache” in a nutshell, and just about every other generic male-centric coming-of-age story.

I think shaving is one of those to-dos that men take for granted, having shaved so many times that it’s hard to remember when was the first time the razor made contact with our upper lip. However, I do remember mine, and I don’t ever recall the experience being so dramatic. Although, much like Ilyas’ mother in the film, my own mother warned that the hair would regrow thicker after being shaved, I never experienced the shame that Ilyas felt in having that kind of facial hair, it simply existed for me.

Eventually, the more I sat with these similarities with my own life and the similarities of the film with other bildungsromans, the more I came to realize that “Mustache” doesn’t provide anything substantially new to the genre or even pushes the envelope on any topic. In the past, the San Diego Asian Film Festival has premiered several bildungsromans like “Riceboy Sleeps,” “The Fish Tale,” “Hill of Secrets,” and “Death of Nintendo,” and all added a twist to what otherwise would be a run-of-the-mill story. “Death of Nintendo” is probably the closest to “Mustache” with the use of generic bildungsroman plot points. However, what separates “Death of Nintendo” from “Mustache” is that the former uses circumcision, and its significance in Filipino culture, as the transition into adulthood rather than facial hair. The main protagonist thinks circumcision will result in some drastic change, but realizes, after getting circumcised, that it was all in his head, potentially serving as a commentary on the arbitrary nature of circumcision as a cultural tool. Additionally, having foreskin serve as the main plot device adds more weight to the decision of the character because of the obvious: hair grows back and foreskin does not.

While facial hair does have cultural significance in Islamic culture, this is never properly integrated into the narrative. It’s more used to convey Illyas’s estrangement with classmates. At the film’s end, the viewer is left with a shot of Ilyas holding an electric razor, and staring into the mirror, before suddenly cutting to black. According to the director, the ending was meant to invoke a conversation amongst viewers as to whether or not he shaved his mustache, but because of the lack of consequences of his choice, all I could really think was, “Who cares?”

Beyond the plot points and cultural significance, I thought “Mustache” as a comedic film was fine. Several of the jokes throughout the film were funny and executed in a way that was dry and never overly played out. After the screening, in a Q&A, director Khan described the comedy of the film as almost British in nature: dry and needing the protagonist to be unaware of the circumstances around him. The film succeeded in this, especially since I’m a fan of humor that’s less on the exuberant or flamboyant end of the spectrum.

As someone who went to a Catholic private school from K-12, I really did want to like this movie as I felt it spoke to me in some regard. Regardless, I’m perhaps not the target audience of its cultural messages. Nonetheless, despite its humor, “Mustache” leaves something to be desired, something of substance that leaves an impact and begs the audience to ruminate post-screening, something that simply wasn’t there.