Touki Bouki (1973)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ 

Touki Bouki (1973) – D. D. Mambety

I might be tempted to call this exhilarating Senegalese film “psychedelic” (because of all the non-diegetic sound and eclectic music) but probably it is really taking its cues from the French New Wave.  Djibril Diop Mambety (who wrote and directed) is very free-spirited with the narrative, which sees two lovers aspiring to escape Dakar for their idealized version of Paris, often pausing to show us the African backdrop of people, shantytowns, and ocean vistas.  Most likely, there is symbolism here that I’m missing (the early slaughter of the cow that is related somehow to the horns on the motorbike that serves ultimately to distract Mory from his journey to France, for example).  But you do get a feeling that this is what Dakar really was like in 1973 and perhaps the film makes it seem exotic enough that you wonder why Mory and Anta would want to leave (except of course for the way they are treated as outcasts/misfits and the general poverty all around) – but so it goes even today.  Yet somehow the film feels uplifting.