Atlantics

Set against the contrasts of modern Dakar, both poverty and progress, Atlantics is an endearing love story and a challenging ghost tale. It speaks of love's enduring allure and the cost of true love with the modern world's disdain for simplicity and virtue.

Ada (Mame Bineta Sane) loves Souleiman (Traore), a construction worker who hasn't been paid in three months. They are beautiful people worthy of Romeo and Juliet and just as star-crossed. Ada is doomed to marry the rich Omar (Babacar Sylla), a situation envied by almost everyone but Ada, for whom the rich life with a man she doesn't love holds no allure.

So far so good because she'll marry Omar while Souleiman is lost at sea going to Spain, where he hoped for wages. That's about the most sense in the film because the strange reappearance of Souleiman later in the film will challenge your sense of logic while he appears with others as ghosts, who are probably responsible for the fires set at Ada's new home.

Director Mati Diop, with a gift for weaving the real with the magical, takes a leisurely cinematic stroll through the tragedy, keeping the dialogue simple enough to read at the bottom of the screen while the lovers are talking or loving. The images of Muejiza Tower help to emphasize the theme of change and empowerment.

The investigation of the fires and strange appearances gets mixed leading to slight confusion of identities. Yet, that's the point: the loss of true love can upend any life, and the confusion of friends and family about a marriage can contribute to the tragedy that may ensue.

Meanwhile multiple, maybe too many, images of the rolling surf and setting sun can crowd the screen with too much imagery and not enough insightful dialogue. Atlantics is a lyrical film with classic ideas about love and change, simple and strong while it stays in reality. The magical doesn't work that well when so much crushing reality dominates this parched but progressive landscape.

An enigmatic film that unfolds like a satisfying ghost story.

Set in Dakar, Senegal, the film's main female protagonist is Ada, in love with Suleiman but promised in an arranged marriage to the wealthy Omar. Suleiman goes missing with a bunch of other men who set sail across the Atlantic for Spain and better opportunities, and the film is largely about the women they leave behind to think about them and possibly mourn for them. But the ghost story part comes in when mysterious occurrences suggest that the spirits of the men may be possessing various townspeople and carrying out the men's wishes in their physical absence.

Like many films I've seen this year, a theme in "Atlantics" is the disparity between the haves and the have nots. Omar promises Ada a life of sterile comfort, but Suleiman offers love and affection, if economic hardship. It's also a window into the world of those we hear about in the news but rarely see as people, those who emigrate to other places in an attempt to find something better. And it's also about the few choices available to women living in certain parts of the world. But none of this is communicated to us through preaching or lecturing. The movie is more than anything an ethereal love story.

Grade: A-

Maybe a little slow for some however worked well and rewarded my patience. Far from being confused as to what genre it is, it seemed pretty clear to me it's a love / ghost story set in contemporary Dakar, Senegal. There's something of a social commentary / realist element and for me it was interesting opening a window on to the lives of young Senegalese women, as well as the customs of an Islamic marriage in West Africa. There's a nice shot of the girls walking along the beach, dressed up to go to the bar, very much like their contemporaries would in any other major city - they wouldn't look out of place in Manchester say and that connecting felt nice, emphasising how much more we have in common than the differences.

There's repeating shots of a misty sea - the sea in Freudian terms symbolises the mother. The central character, a young woman getting married with the expectations of eventual motherhood. If the sea here is the mother it's also the cause of death - her true love, not the man she'll be marrying, has apparently become one of the many drowned in the mediterranean, making the perilous crossing from Africa to Europe in the hope of a better life. In death is life and so on. This is a movie working more on symbolism and allusion rather than straightforward narrative arc. The sterility of a marriage built upon status and material possessions is contrasted with the vitality of a relationship built upon truth and love - the emptiness of the marriage bed, the sterility of the white room, the bland surroundings of the upscale bar where Omar drinks fruit juice from a straw, child like, perhaps a comment about the infantilising of the supposedly sophisticated.

The director produces something properly cinematic with superb composition, backed up with a marvellous synthesizer score, some very nice moody shots of the city at night. This film works best on mood and atmosphere, attempts at shoe horning it into the conventions of narrative are liable to be frustrated. You need to open yourself up and try to empathise with the character, the lead actress is fantastic in the emotions she conveys through expression and body language. It's a film using the language of cinema as I say, symbolism, allusion. You need to 'feel' this film I think, it will frustrate intellectual analysis and to do so misses the point. It's there to be experienced. It won't be for everyone. Still, I'm delighted to see the torch of the art movie now carried forward by a female Senegalese director and her team who can rightfully take their place in a distinguished canon of Senegalese and indeed African film artists.

I am too stupid to like this film. It is beautifully shot with wonderful soundscapes however the acting and story line left me out in the cold and bored.

The cinematography is impressive, which confirms in my mind that Claire Mathon was the cinematographer of the year in 2019, with this, "Atlantics," and, better yet, "Portrait of a Lady on Fire." She knows how to compose an image. Unfortunately, there's not much going on otherwise in this critically-overrated picture, but it does benefit from its numerous empty spaces and transitions being filled by lovely imagery. Lots of shots of the sea, along with wind-swept curtains and open windows, mirrors and neon strobe lights. And the eyes of the possessed women are admittedly haunting. The rest of it, however, is a mess, including a narrative that combines a "Ghosts" (1990) like supernatural romance of necrophilia with the problem of arranged marriage, some lackluster drama or social commentary on workers avenging their employer for not being paid and the risks of economically-displaced migration, and, most miserably, a dull detective story investigating a series of arson cases. All of its connected in the slightest and contrived of ways. The plot is best the longer things remain mysterious; once figured out, it's quite disappointing. But, like the central romance, which largely consists of boy telling girl she's beautiful, "Atlantics" is at least nice to look at.