Opening with an extremely grisly scene of animal slaughter (metaphorical for the cultural decimation brought about by the French colonization of Senegal, but still very uncomfortable to watch), Djibril Diop Mambéty’s 1973 Touki Bouki is a cinematic fever dream, unspooling a tale of Bonnie and Clyde-lite African lovers trying to raise enough cash to escape to a secular Mecca: Paris.
Inspired by the French New Wave, Mambéty’s film weaves a chronologically fractured story mixing real and fantasy elements as it follows rebel-with-somewhat-of-a-cause Mory (Magaye Niang)—a cowherd and small-time grifter who rides a motorcycle adorned with a bull-horned skull—and his university-attending, tradition-scorning girlfriend Anta (Mareme Niang).
After failing at various swindle and heist attempts, Mory strikes relative gold when he is invited into the home of a gay man, who asks Mory to join him in the shower. Instead, Mory literally cleans out the man’s closet and he and Anty steal the guy’s American-colors-bedecked car, aiming to convert their newfound sartorial wealth into transatlantic tickets to Europe.
The line between what is real and what is imagined here can be rather fuzzy, but the thematic concerns are quite clear: Mory and Anty live in a postcolonial world in which the promises of capitalism have not borne fruit, just frustration, with the disenfranchised young pining for a good life that seems to be perennially out of reach.
Bowing on high-definition with an impressive 2K digital transfer, extras include a 2013 introduction by Martin Scorsese, a 2013 interview with filmmaker Abderrahmane Sissako, a 2012 interview featuring musician Wasis Diop and filmmaker Mati Diop (Mambéty’s brother and niece, respectively), Mambéty’s 1968 short film Contras’ City, and a leaflet with an essay by film programmer and critic Ashley Clark. Although not for all tastes—the non-linear narrative will bother some—this is a seminal work of African independent cinema. Recommended.