Migration, an arranged marriage and zombies form the backbone of Atlantics, all under the ominous glow of an unfinished megatower in Dakar.
Senegal
3.5*
Director:
Mati Diop
Screenwriters:
Mati Diop
Olivier Demangel
Director of Photography:
Claire Mathon
Running time: 100 minutes
Original title: Atlantique
Resembling something straight out of Metropolis, Muejiza reaches into the sky like the Tower of Babel. It is still unfinished, but those working on the construction site are very unhappy – and with good reason. The developer, Mr. N’Diaye, hasn’t paid them in months. They have girlfriends or families to support, but Mr. N’Diaye is out of reach. They can’t wait any longer, and by nightfall, a group of them take a boat out to Spain. Within days, news reaches their community in Dakar that all of them have perished at sea.
One of the people hardest hit by the news is Ada (Mama Sané). Barely out of school, she was secretly seeing the dashing but now-late Souleiman (Ibrahima Traoré). Their relationship was a secret because she is promised to Omar, a wealthy young Senegalese man working in Italy. But her mind is clearly elsewhere, and by the time her wedding night rolls around, her white nuptial bed bursts into flames. Not out of passion but, according to one police investigator, because of spontaneous combustion.
The policeman in charge of this apparent case of arson is Issa, who is around the same age as Souleiman. His boss, the commissioner, refers to him as a “young star”, though his investigative techniques leave us wondering whether he ever received any training. For some reason, he quickly suspects Souleiman of having survived, returned to Dakar, infiltrated the wedding party and set his girlfriend’s bed alight, all incognito. He is so adamant about this theory that he goes straight to Souleiman’s parents’ house, where he tells the grieving mother her son is still alive and has likely committed a crime. None of this endears him to the viewer. But there is something else that is weird. He keeps sweating so much that he collapses. This happens very often around sunset.
Soon enough, we see what all of this means. Halfway through the film, a group of women show up at the mansion belonging to Mr. N’Diaye and demand the three months of wages. Their eyes are all white as an oval moon. They are zombies, although we have seen some of them before among the living. Why these women, in particular, are the vessels for those who drowned at sea is left unexplained. Clearly, they represent the tens of thousands of women who are left behind in Senegal while men make the hazardous journey across the ocean to try their luck in Europe. But then, Issa also becomes a zombie and channels the departed Souleiman.
Again, we don’t get any explanation for why Issa serves as a vessel for Souleiman, nor is it evident why he is the only man to take on such a role. Most likely, the director wanted to avoid girl-on-girl intimacy at the film’s climax, but the screenplay suffers mightily because of this inconsistency and lack of a proper explanation. What makes it all the more confusing is that Issa had already started collapsing before his involvement in Ada’s case.
While the film has a certain charm about it, it leaves the viewer with many questions that are never answered. Ada and Souleiman spend very little time together before his fateful departure, and their interaction is limited. Souleiman doesn’t let Ada know when he leaves, so perhaps he didn’t view the relationship as anything substantive. This makes it difficult to empathise with Ada, whose melancholy persists for most of the film. And almost all of her best friends who come to the wedding are shocked to learn that she doesn’t really care for her new husband. Hadn’t she ever spoken to them before? In addition, there is also zero chemistry between her and Omar, and we get no hint of an explanation for their marriage.
Atlantics is full of images of the ocean that remind us again and again of the tide rolling out with boats of migrants and, presumably, rolling back in with the spirits of the dead. And the film does a wonderful lo-fi job with mirrors, while the grotesque, conspicuous tower is very realistically rendered through CGI. But the screenplay is seriously flawed with almost no backstory to the main characters and very little development of some major peripheral characters.
This is a memorable and ambitiously staged (though problematic) depiction of the consequences migration has on those who are left behind. Diop shows herself to be a very able filmmaker, but in the future, she would be wise to wait until the screenplay is ready before starting production.