Writer-director Ekwa Msangi’s 2020 Farewell Amor uses a Rashomon-style structure to present an intimate character drama told from the perspectives of a father, mother, and daughter who are reunited after a 17-year separation.
The film opens at the arrivals gate at JFK airport in Queens, where Brooklyn taxi driver Walter (Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine) greets his wife Esther (Zainab Jah) and teenage daughter Sylvia (Jayme Lawson). The family was torn asunder during the 2002 civil war in Angola when Sylvia was just a baby. Esther and Sylvia wound up in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, while Walter came to New York with the intent of bringing his family to America.
But the wheels of the bureaucratic system turn slowly and nearly two decades pass before Walter’s paperwork is approved. Walter’s live-in lover—a nurse named Linda (Nana Mensah) who initially helped Walter with the immigration process—has swiftly moved out of his one-bedroom apartment to make way for the family, whose re-introductions are awkward, at best. As Esther will later say, “We don’t even know each other anymore, or ourselves.”
Walter has become Americanized and is shocked (and somewhat disheartened) by Esther’s fervent embrace of religion, while moody adolescent Sylvia is a complete cipher to him. Already nostalgic for his former relationship, Walter stops at a dance club after a shift and asks Linda for one more dance, which she grants but then reminds Walter that she needs to move on.
Dance is a central motif in the film: it’s the devil’s plaything according to Esther (she also frowns at Walter’s innocent attempt to have a celebratory glass of wine at dinner), but dance is a major aspect of earbud-wearing Sylvia’s life, who surreptitiously pursues her passion by entering a dance competition.
As each section plays out—Walter’s Sylvia’s, Esther’s—we see the same events through different eyes and discover what each character knows or intuits. And if Esther initially seems like a Christian fundamentalist with a very narrowly defined sense of what’s fun, it is her story that is ultimately the most powerful, as she struggles to rekindle a relationship with her husband while maintaining her deep faith (in one heartbreaking scene, Esther calls a nun back in Tanzania to tearfully lament that she and Walter may be “unequally yoked”; the nun’s response: send more money to the church).
What makes Farewell Amor work so well is the nuanced performances from the excellent cast, which includes Joie Lee (Spike Lee’s sister), wonderful as Walter’s next-door neighbor Nzingha, a vegan, yoga-practicing, thoroughly New Yorker immigrant.
Presented with a fine 2K transfer, extras include a new audio commentary featuring director Ekwa Msangi and cinematographer Bruce Francis Cole; three short films by Msangi: “Suspense” (2011), “The Market King” (2014), and the prequel “Farewell Meu Amor” (2016); new interviews with actors Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine, Zainab Jah, and Jayme Lawson; deleted scenes; and a leaflet with an essay by scholar Tiana Reid.
A beautifully filmed, emotionally satisfying immigrant story that revolves around complex family relationships, Farewell Amor is highly recommended for public library shelves.