Touki Bouki (1973)

directed by Djibril Diop Mambety
Senegal
85 minutes
4 stars out of 5
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Film is probably the best coping mechanism we have to deal with change and even facilitate it, if we want to. We can record our memories of where we've come from to better remember them, and we can contemplate what the place we're going to will be like in a medium that allows us to visualize our ideas. Touki Bouki is, while slightly obtuse, a film about change- a very culturally specific change; a young couple becoming disillusioned with their life in Senegal and seeking out the supposed hip, youthful paradise that Paris advertises itself as.

I was looking at the movie's page on imdb while I was watching it and it kind of surprised me to see it called an avant-garde film because until then I had thought it wasn't avant-garde at all, and I was right in the middle of watching it. I do wonder a bit if maybe the temptation to quickly call it avant-garde isn't due to a cultural divide in which the contributions of a specifically Senegalese person recording their own experiences isn't able to be parsed by another party and is therefore dismissed as abstraction. I think you have to consider the filmmaker's background before you slap a genre label on it like that. Touki Bouki might not make the most sense to white, Western audiences, but Djibril Diop Mambety definitely had an intent in making every scene and it's not really great to throw that in the avant-garde pile.

In fact, that a filmmaker can make something like this where it's a little different from the traditional dramatic narrative and still successfully relay the message of change and youthful disillusionment utilizing a range of unique methods is a real indicator of some serious talent.

The visuals are gorgeous and the way people blend into their environment no matter where that environment may be (save for times where the disparity between the two is the focus of the scene) is something I don't always see. I think it's hard to get people to be in the right places at the right time and look the right way, but the textures of the characters' clothing against the colors of the natural landscape belie a very deliberate aesthetic that's really appealing to watch. If you get the Criterion version, there's a little note before the beginning of the film about how a couple of big names like Martin Scorsese and some high-end clothing brands stepped in to help preserve the film, and it's sad that the availability of relatively old movies like this to wider audiences sometimes has to depend on the help of outsiders. I wish African film was more readily available in the States because it could broaden a lot of peoples' horizons and there's so many filmmakers from so many countries in Africa who never get the recognition they deserve worldwide. The goal for all Americans should be to watch more African film.