TIFF '24: "On Becoming a Guinea Fowl" and 'Vagabond Queen'

by Cláudio Alves 

ON BECOMING A GUINEA FOWL

This year, like the last, I'm focusing much of my TIFF schedule on international cinema, looking a bit past the Hollywood Oscar hopefuls that tend to overtake the conversation. Sometimes, this strategy results in glorious cinematic experiences, often bolstered by a feeling of discovery. In other occasions, the outcome is more disappointing but no less interesting to parse out. All this to say that, diving into part of the African contingent of TIFF programming, On Becoming a Guinea Fowl and The Legend of the Vagabond Queen of Lagos represent a study in contrasts, from their value as cinema to their intentions, from character study in oblique terms to a raging political indictment of national injustices…

ON BECOMING A GUINEA FOWL, Rungano Niyoni

With her debut, I Am Not a Witch, Zambian director Rungano Niyoni put her name on the map. It's only logical for her follow-up to be met with high expectations and some trepidation. Would this up-and-coming cineaste fall into the dreaded sophomore slump, or would she soar above it? While I wonder if Niyoni's second feature bests her first, On Becoming a Guinea Fowl is still a staggering piece of cinema that demands your attention from minute one. Indeed, its opening might be one of the year's oddest, an arresting wonder set on a lonely country road in the middle of the night. A car drives by, a single moving element in the moonlit stillness.

Inside, the camera finds Shula, a stoic young woman whose guarded look will become a familiar enigma for the viewer. Not that we can perceive much of her gaze this early on. She's wearing sunglasses at night, dressed up like Missy Elliott in "The Rain" video, complete with a fantastically voluminous body suit. It's a comical sight, an indication of the absurdities the film will play with as it unravels, often colliding the solemn and the silly to better engage, mayhap destabilize the viewer. In this case, the masquerade party getup shall be our first impression of Shula when, in the middle of the road, she finds her uncle's dead body. 

One would expect a flash of grief or at least a glimpse of painful shock. Instead, serenity prevails, verging on detachment. A phone call to her party monster dad does little to illuminate the mystery of Shula's non-reaction, and the sudden appearance of Nsana, her drunk cousin, only complicates things. Instead of crying or slipping into a twinned calm, she laughs. Soon, the audience is also left laughing, both at Nsana's antics and the straight contrast to Shula's apparent disinterest in the whole affair. Before sunrise, our only clue into the odd family dynamic is a cryptic apparition. It's a ghost of sorts, but not Uncle Fred. 

Along with a few others, the spirit of yesteryear will haunt the film, even when out of sight. That's especially true as you start to put the pieces together and uncovering truth like an archeologist might brush away centuries of dirt from a mural's surface. It's a gradual process, passing through the rituals of grief practiced by godly middle-class people, the circus and calamity of a Zambian funeral. The unspooling also weaves a yarn through sharp observations on a patriarchal culture whose structural sexism is sometimes most strongly upheld by women. Through it all, Niyoni's camera and cutting are lucid and clear-eyed, revealing what social mores conceal. 

They are also furious, brimming and boiling. It starts with Shula's indifference and ends with a transmuted shriek, confronting the evil of forgiving and forgetting head-on. Eulogies are especially sinister in this scenario, for they insist on honoring the dead by erasing what they did to the living. To insist on propriety is to perpetuate the ills done by the departed, something of a curse or disease. On Becoming a Guinea Fowl articulates all this, one way or the other, but stops itself short of prescriptive moralism. Even when the film finds solace in a sisterhood of survivors, it can elude expected conclusions and retroactively make a heartfelt scene feel laden with hypocrisy. 

More than I Am Not a Witch, Niyoni's sophomore feature confirms her ability to shift and undercut tones, often through formal quirks disrupting how one might read the subjects depicted. The editing has a razor's smile and the compositions showcase unusual wit. Some images are sure to haunt the viewer after they leave the theater, whether because of their mirth or misery. On the one hand, you have the ridiculousness of a library disco. On the other, the medusa-like braids of a fallen girl amid a flooded dormitory. Performances are nearly as agile, though Susan Chardy is constricted by Shula's closed demeanor. As Nsansa, Elizabeth Chisela has none of those limitations and delivers a supporting tour de force, turning a laugh riot into a punch to the gut.

THE LEGEND OF THE VAGABOND QUEEN OF LAGOS

THE LEGEND OF THE VAGABOND QUEEN OF LAGOS, The Agbajowo Collective

In the symmetrical way that On Becoming a Guinea Fowl is sharp and slippery, The Legend of the Vagabond Queen of Lagos is a blunt object that sticks like a barb and doesn't let go. Furthermore, it's a sermon, unashamed of its activist intention and radically forthcoming with its politics. In other words, it's a 'message picture', though one far removed from the Hollywood tradition we associate with the label. Created by the Agbajowo Collective, the film represents their attempt to bring the world's attention to the forced displacement crisis in Nigeria, narrativizing a real-life tragedy through fictional figures, a dash of melodrama.

Rather than whispering its wrath, The Legend of the Vagabond Queen of Lagos screams its outrage to the heavens. As commendable as that is, it's also limiting when applied to a narrative, denying the characters a personhood that goes beyond their one mechanical role in this political theater. Jawu is our heroine, a swallow seller who bears the mark of a warrior king on her skin. Yet, she sits on no throne, spending her days within the Agbojedo community that floats atop the lagoon for which the city of Lagos was baptized. The slums are to be destroyed and its inhabitants displaced, but, in the middle of a growing pandemonium, Jawu finds the hidden fortunes of a corrupt politician.

Temi Ami-Williams does what she can with the part, but there's only so much one can do with a text that's as shallow as the cinematography. Oh yes, if you're tired of the televisual trend of short focal lengths, The Legend of the Vagabond Queen of Lagos might inspire a conniption. That's not to say the film isn't beautiful. The use of color can be striking, and the Collective sure knows how to frame the magnitude of destroyed communities, an apocalyptic landscape sometimes perceived through the God's eye view. But in appreciating such qualities, one smacks against another of the film's fragilities – its inconsistencies and surges of amateurish form.

At times, it's as if one can sense a different vision behind the camera from scene to scene, visual strategies changing without apparent motivation. It's understandable, somewhat. Present at TIFF to introduce their work, the directors aren't shy about admitting their lack of filmmaking background when confronting this project. One could hope this would result in bracing cinema, the kind that teeters on the edge of outsider art. Sadly, The Legend of the Vagabond Queen of Lagos errs on the side of convention, thriller clichés, and cheap sentiment. So, clumsy but earnest, the film works as a call to action. But still, I won't lie – I want more from cinema than this. 

On Becoming a Guinea Fowl says, "fuck unity," and The Legend of the Vagabond Queen of Lagos promises that "unity is our strength." What other contradictions will our TIFF double features bring? Stay tuned for more.