Reactions visible to anyoneReactions visible to owner’s Close FriendsReactions only visible to youDraft entryVisible to anyone (with link)Visible to the member’s friends (with link)Only visible to you
This is a nonstop parade of bad news and bitter luck continually befalling two fundamentally decent people. It makes for an incredibly difficult watch, made all the more so by two profoundly believable performances by the leads. In fact, I stopped it halfway through and only came back to finish it months later, after watching Rosine Mbakam’s “Mambar Pierrette” the other day, another cavalcade of happiness-crushing travails visited on a fundamentally decent eponymous character.
These are both well-made, worthwhile films, but they really made me wonder: what do film lovers want out of these stories of African protagonists? Of course, it’s important to depict their stories with honesty, whether the tales are good or bad, but is there also no room for them to be joyful, to be triumphant in life, even for a few moments? It just feels like the depiction of these characters, while unflinchingly observational, is also narrow and limited. Put another way, are western audiences demanding tales of Third World misery to the exclusion of truly dimensional portraits of these foreign, distant cultures? I don’t know the answer, but it’s worth considering.
Letterboxd is an independent service created by a small team, and we rely mostly on the support of our members to maintain our site and apps. Please consider upgrading to a Pro account—for less than a couple bucks a month, you’ll get cool additional features like all-time and annual stats pages (example), the ability to select (and filter by) your favorite streaming services, and no ads!
