XALA (The Curse) (73)

Directed by: Ousmane Sembene (1974)

Starring: Thierno Leye, Seune Samb, Miriam Niang

The Pitch: A middle-aged businessman in West Africa takes a third wife as a status symbol - but his status begins to slip as he finds himself unable to consummate the marriage.

Theo Sez: Second viewing after many years, upping the rating a couple of notches. An African sex-comedy, which makes a change from all those earnest anti-colonial tracts - except of course that an anti-colonial tract is exactly what it is, only sly and satirical rather than earnest (and, in the end, astonishingly bitter). Its target is the first generation of post-independence Africans, those who threw out the Europeans only to ape their worst excesses - washing their cars with Evian, speaking only French amongst themselves, ignoring the poor and needy, refusing to holiday in Spain because "there are too many Negroes there" : a pathetic breed of kleptocrats, stuck between two cultures ("neither fish nor fowl," somebody calls them), their impotence reflected both in the plot and the constant background presence of those same Europeans, now returned (toting briefcase-fuls of cash) as obsequious "advisers". No great shakes as cinematic technique, and the pace stutters a bit - everything seems to take too long, reaction-shots held for a beat or so before and after - but the leisurely rhythms, like the declamatory style in some of the performances, only add to its sense of otherness. The elaborately-dressed elite clustering in spacious gardens while beggars bay just outside the gates is a sight from another world, but even the ordinary stuff seems unfamiliar, determinedly African : the physical presence of Dakar in the 70s - a city of palm trees, whitewashed houses and boulevards without cars - is very strong.