A bewitching family melodrama: NPR

Susan Chardy like Shula By becoming a poultry of India.

Chibesa Mulumba / A24

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Chibesa Mulumba / A24

The bewitching melodrama of the filmmaker Rungano Nyoni Become a poultry Starts with a woman named Shula (Susan Chardy) who performs on the corpse of her uncle Fred on the side of an empty dirt road in Zambia one evening. Shula is strangely insensitive. In fact, she seems more embarrassed and bored than anything else – now she has to wait with him until the authorities come, which takes hours.

This opening scene takes place in a surreist manner, underlined by a pinch of magic realism and Shula’s outfit – an apparent reference to the futuristic swollen combination of Missy Elliott, sunglasses in insect eyes and alliance helmet in the clip for “The rain (SUPA DUPA FLY). “Everything is a bit disabled,, not broadcast. But finally, as Nyoni allows carefully and compassionate the parts to set up, it makes sense. When this is the case, it resonates deeply.

The family traveling near and far converges on a person’s house for several days of mourning, including the mother struck by Shula (Doris Naulapwa). Most of these characters do not stand out for themselves – there are so many aunts, and with an exception, men are not really emphasized here – but Nyoni plunges the viewer into the dynamics and complex hierarchies at stake by carefully observed interactions, to the practices as apparently anodyne as the preparation and the service of meals. The ancients are content to let things play as they always do, to the point of dogmatism. But a bad mind drags on this ritual, and it links Shula with its cousins ​​Nsansa (Elizabeth Chisela) and Bupe (Esther Singini), even if they do not recognize it at the beginning. This spirit is likely to be buried with Fred, instead of being confronted and treated with a front.

Shula (Susan Chardy) and Nsansa (Elizabeth Chisela).

Chibesa Mulumba / A24

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Chibesa Mulumba / A24

Guinea fowlThe themes are familiar but powerful, and are always repeated when they are made as clearly and evocative as they are here: the dark secrets concerning abuse and trauma are maintained to preserve “standards” and “unity”, often at the expense of victims who suffer in silence. The older generations define the model and each next generation must decide to follow this example or reject it.

It is striking to see how cousins ​​try to resist in a distinct way. As Shula, Chardy is a moving presence that does not have to say much to transmit the interior of his character and resentment, who simmer under her exterior to the stony face while she goes through the performative movements of the sorrow. Nsansa also is a black sheep – noisy, constantly drunk and dull in its disdain for Fred’s ceremony. While the pre-country procedure rolls, this rough personality gives way to a softer and more vulnerable side than Chisela, a good artist, captures wonderfully. Bus, the youngest and most impressionable, makes more drastic choices from a feeling of helplessness.

The writer / director Nyoni, who is British-Zambian, has established himself as a follower of this kind of very strange world construction. In his big feature film I am not a witchIt obviously and tragically explored the misogynist and conservative social constructions which allowed the existence of “witch camps“Where women accused of being witches are ostracized and forced to work for local chiefs. Guinea fowl is also critical and deeply curious to strengthen the thought of the group and the power of tradition within the communities, while the death of Uncle Fred sets in motion a series of long -standing customs of mourning.

The film echo I am not a witch In another very direct way: their protagonists share the same name. In the latter, Shula (Maggie Mulubwa) is an orphan child banned to the community of older “witches”; They give him this name because, we are told, it means “uprooted”. In Guinea fowlShula is an adult woman, but she as well as Nsansa and Bupe are also uprooted in a way, foreigners less attached to the ritual to which their elders cling. Their rebellion is not easy, and it does not necessarily come out strong. But this is exactly the point – the overwhelming weight of the family obligation and longtime social customs help to explain why the obscure cycle can persist.

Nyoni leaves room for hope, however, that silence will ultimately become too strong to ignore.