Touki Bouki

Touki Bouki (1973)

Runtime: 89 minutes

Directed by: Djibril Diop Mambety

Starring: Magaye Niang, Mareme Niang, Aminata Fall, Ousseynou Diop

From: Cinegrit/Studio Kankourama

Here is another review from me where I go against the grain. In this case it's a highly praised movie from the country of Senegal and I really don't get the praise. I explain why below and I'll return tomorrow night.

I realize that I am an outlier here as most who have seen this film from Senegal rate it higher than I do and in fact cries of it being “great” aren't too hard to find. Maybe I haven't seen enough French New Wave or similar films but I just did not really enjoy watching this at all. It's a shame as I really did want to like this, a film known as The Journey of the Hyena in its native Wolof language.

The story is rather simple: two young adults (a male and female couple) live in the capital of Senegal, Dakar. They're in the poor slums of the city, outside of the high rises and nice houses. They wish to leave to go to France, the country that for about 100 years up to 1960 had Senegal as one of its colonies. As they're poor they try a few methods of acquiring cash to leave. That's really about it. Not a whole lot happens in this glacially S-L-O-W movie, and it's oddly paced to boot. Now, I am not a rube that needs ADD editing or frenetic pacing to be entertained. To list a random example, I never though Refn's Drive was “dull” or “boring”.

It's just that the two leads are total blank slates and you're never given any real reason to care about them, their plight, or their desire to leave their country and hope for something better in another country. Instead, the movie has abstract moments and some surreal ones too. That'd be fine, except that as a whole I thought this movie didn't work and all that nonsense didn't really matter. Oh, and for anyone who is an animal lover, a vegetarian lover/vegan or just don't like seeing cows and goats legit getting killed on camera and graphically seeing the blood pour out of them as they're killed... I am not a vegan by any means but I had no idea that was in this film and I personally did not see to see it. Those more sensitive, you have been warned.

Personally, I was actually more interested in checking out how Senegal looked back then. I sadly don't know much about Africa in general and I do need to look up information on that for my own education. What I saw in the film (and I had plenty of time to look at the scenery due to the slow as molasses pace) it was clear that there were still French influences, such as the automobiles; there were plenty of Citroen and Renault cars to look at, and judging from a billboard they still sold French cars there at the time, and presumably still do now. The obvious differences between those that had money and those that don't were apparent. I got to see the colorful traditional outfits the common folk wore and even the country's version of wrestling-amateur and not the sort of stuff that John Cena does-known as Laamb in Wolof.

Maybe what I am saying is that I'd prefer a documentary about the country, its history and how it's managed to be one of the better countries on the continent in the post-colonial era, at least when it comes to such things as political coups and much of the turmoil that plagues too many countries there. I'd obviously get more out of that than what I got out of this, where apparently much of it was lost on me. At least the actual filmmaking was good for someone who I understand had no formal training and the Triumph motorcycle with the cow skull looked pretty rad...