On Becoming a Guinea Fowl
On Becoming a Guinea Fowl
It is commonly said as a courtesy that speaking ill of the dead is in bad taste. Sometimes, it makes perfect sense to avoid speaking poorly of anyone, and particularly, of the living. But for women who are angry with younger men and wish to seek redress from them, this becomes very delicate, as one wonders when it is right to speak. In “On becoming a guinea fowl,” a stunning film by Rungano Nyoni scalding collective rage seethes underneath the quiet as children abused by a common man turn against the cooing silence of familial supports when he dies without remorse. This is innovative, future-oriented cinema that blends sticky dark humor with biting poetic realism in order to depict Zambia at the generational tensions of gung-ho conservatism and gradual societal evolution.
Premiered in Cannes in the form of an Un Certain Regard and while it could easily have occupied the main Competition section Nyoni was part of last year – “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” comes to Cannes with the envy of Tigran, A24, BBC Film, Fremantle, and the producers of the high-flying Irish company Element Pictures Poor Things Room. It was, however, also due to the amount of media attention garnered by a certain Nyoni, last seen at Sundance with her documentary: ‘The return of the queen’, it was similar in tone to surrealist austerity with whiffs of African feminism that fought social conservatism. This film was at once more difficult than that one, since it was filled with fantastic images and soundscapes, emphasizing the cross-cultural nature of the director – a Zambian raised mainly in Wales, which was reflected in her work more than once.
Her subsequent absorbs the formal splendour, instead exploring internal and external matrixes of culture to harvest complex cultural clashing – even if she still can, along with Colombian ace DP David Gallego (“Embrace of the Serpent,” “War Pony”), owe the moneymaking frame. “Guinea Fowl” starts off with a somewhat bizarre picture, depicting Shula (Susan Chardy) driving back home peacefully after attending a fancy dress party. This time she is on a black puffy bodysuit made of buoyant urea with a big rhinestone headpiece that vertically obstructs her face. It is difficult to ascertain whether the costume given to the character is more inspired by heads of hip hop, the local fowl fluffed up in the film or both: A returned Zambian after a period of stay abroad, Shula (the name of the persecuted little girl in “I Am Not a Witch,” there is a woman somewhere) serves no culture.
Something on the street makes her stop for a second – enough time for her not to get out of the car, but to switch off the engine. Phone call to her father this time evokes less panic and indignation on her part: Henry B.J. Phiri, uncle Fred is lying on the road bang appearances and explanations aside. Ella Driver sits on verbal sex with aphorisms her steady tone quite impressive while explaining thin and emotionless face straighted. As the news ripples in the family in the wee hours of the morning she is still parked by the body. She does not move to change position even when her more excitable cousin Nsansa a very feisty Elizabeth Chisela bangs the car door telling her excitedly that their uncle is dead a few steps from a whorehouse. “The big man has died while still a man,” Nsansa thicks him, as delightedly as this other death in the family seems to have left Shula decorated ten-penny-cards male-nozzle abreast. As both of them still lean on the two younger women who watch over the decomposing body there lacks in their reasons more and more such dramatic explanations. Maybe they just want to make sure that he is really dead.
The fact that Shula, Nsansa, and another cousin, Bupe (Esther Singini), have been victims of sexual violence perpetrated by Uncle Fred, in addition to an immeasurable number of women in the family, emerges clearly though it has never been a topic of discussion or even revelation, not even at the beginning. Chardy’s performance, still but never impassive, is suffone with all sorts of irritating sores which again and aagain Shula is frustratedly trying not to irritate. However, this is not a tale of long-hidden incriminating family skeletons. Most importantly, it is so, because such information has always been in public domain.
Shula does not want to pretend to be in mourning and pay the last rites as the ceremonies of a conventional funeral get underway. Great bulks of nearly unknown relatives bring about a novel deluge at her average class home, to do the feeding, resting, the stitching of the crimson funerals robes and screaming together- an irritating human orchestra however exacerbated because of the lulling yet dramatic sound design of Olivier Dandré-while Fred’s name receives a make over in terms of his past. Her mom and aunt tell her to bury the hurt with the men who caused it like most of their abused ancestors did. Shared sympathy is talked of least — in the latter stages of the book, the young widow of Fred – sad and powerful; though it is conveyed in a few, and short disheveled electrifying scenes by Norah Mwansa –is missing. Looking up explains what the men think, Nyoni doesn’t very much care: Here, it is only the male voices who have to beg for the money and food, wretched beggars who are what social class gets manicidal attention.
The external feature of a woman’s voice, however, is such that it can be made flexible and full of feeling, such that everyone’s voice rises to different heights and falls. At the peak of the movie, the unchanging wails from the unrepentant outsiders can only be neutralized by a parody of the call of the guinea fowl refrains set in chorus by young girls who mimic the calling sounds of birds and eventually rise in volume and steadiness as an alarm. Even when they speak as individuals, they can speak for others as well: In a shocking piece of self-cinema, Bupe’s smartphone-shot abuse testimony is rhetorically snatched from her in mid-denunciation of Shula and when it is all over the hunched subjects care over the untold timelines recreating events forcibly turning back to their abusers this time in revenge. There is no victor in the stalemate presented in “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl,” although, as Nyoni’s brutal, heartbreaking film demonstrates, preserving unflinching thoughts of the past will outlast erasure.
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- Genre: Comedy, Drama
- Country: United States
- Director: Rungano Nyoni
- Cast: Susan Chardy, Elizabeth Chisela, Henry B. J. Phiri, Chungu Bwalya, Benson Mumba, Roy Chisha, Blessings Bhamjee
