Congolese director Jean Luc Herbulot directs his thriller Saloum in a crazed, headlong rush. At under 90 minutes, he jumps through several genres and themes, such as colonization, child soldiers, genocide and disease. Maybe the frenzied approach is a way to make his subject tolerable, since a more traditional pace might be too uncomfortable to bear. In Herbulot’s hands, the heroes are sharply defined and we immediately understand the existential threats they must face. This is not a didactic film, one that lectures us about modern Africa. Instead, it uses genre tropes to gain our trust and interest, a kind of sweetener for a bitter pill.
A brief, elegiac prologue discusses the nature of revenge. It is an important idea, one Harbulot and co-screenwriter Pamela Diop return to later, but then the plot kicks into gear. Yann Gael plays Chaka, a mercenary who leads his colleagues Rafa (Roger Sallah) and Minuit (Mentor Ba) on a dangerous mission. They plan to smuggle a drug runner (Renaud Farah) out of a city, and everything goes according to plan until the plane crashes in the middle of nowhere. There’s a small village nearby, which is run by Omar (Bruno Henry), an affable proprietor who lets his guests use chores to pay for their lodging. The mercenaries are happy to play along, at least until a crucial moment where Chaka reveals an ulterior motive.
By jostling between Malick-inspired voiceover and war-torn battle scenes, Saloum gives the impression that anything is possible for these characters. Genre guidelines do not narrow how the characters behave, which gives them the facsimile of free choice. We learn this in the film’s most dramatic sequence, where Chaka discusses his past and the real reason for visiting in Omar’s village. It is a powerful scene, one that recalibrates how we think about the characters. Gael’s performance is key to the scene’s power. He is a charismatic leading man, one who portrays eccentricities and flaws while maintaining the gruff exterior of an action hero.
If the middle section is a suspense film, one where we worry whether the mercenaries can complete their mission, then the gripping final act is a descent into full-on terror. Herbulot imagines a kind of invasion thriller, one where the characters must contend with unique monsters. I won’t describe their exact size and power, except to say they are uniquely horrifying and convincing even without a substantial special effects budget. There are a series of assaults and escapes, with these monsters gradually shifting into something more complex, a metaphor for the psychic weight that seemingly everyone in the village must face.
We may eventually learn Chaka and the other mercenaries are not as amoral as they initially seem, but it is Omar’s guest Awa (Evelyne Ily Juhen) who provides crucial moral context. She is deaf and mute, leading to multiple conversations in sign language, where she serves as a clear-eyed observer of all the dynamics at play. After Chaka’s ulterior motive and thirst for revenge, she pushes him toward something beyond mere satisfaction or bloodlust. The camera in Shaloum moves at a breakneck pace, as if its operator also struggles to stay alive from the creatures haunting the characters, and yet Awa provides a sense of grave calm. In a film full of subverted expectations and bait-and-switch tactics, Herbulot’s best trick is creating a violent, chaotic film whose ultimate purpose is finally to get us to think and feel about something greater than the sum of its parts.
Photo courtesy of IFC Midnight
The post Saloum appeared first on Spectrum Culture.