Mambéty’s films never lack a potency of color. There is always an observation of folks pushed to the side, to those marginalized, to those forgotten about, neglected, and oft-harmed. In this case—young women and girls, the disabled, and CHILDREN. He keeps a keen eye on such things, and even though he spoke of certain interests he has, especially as it pertains to people he observes, it always seems as though this is less of a pointed critique on societies (don’t get me wrong it definitely still is, see the interview linked above. but also, just watch the films lmao) and more of an appreciation of the beauties of all folks who inhabit spaces around us. Never cynical, never straining to feel “inclusive”, but rather treating such people as a natural parts of society, which should be how we all approach such. His attentiveness to the post-colonial issues in Africa, more specifically Senegal (admittedly, I am not well read on such things—yet) is a very clear through line in his films, and that is no different here (particularly, the devaluation of the CFA Franc in this and his prior film, Le Franc). He was a beautiful filmmaker and man, and all should see his films, the too few there were. This film was to be the 2nd in his trilogy of “Tales of Little/Ordinary People” (Le Franc [1994] was the first). Then, he was to round out another trilogy of films following Touki Bouki (1973) and Hyenas (1992) on “power and craziness”. In my opinion, these are two of the most enigmatic “what ifs” in cinema’s history. Mambéty is of the greats, for sure.
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