‘On Becoming A Guinea Fowl’: Cannes Review

Dir/scr: Rungano Nyoni. Zambia/UK/Eire. 2024. 98mins

Demise is a clean slate, the sins of the deceased cleaned. What’s mourned by household and pals is a soul that’s as pure because the second that it was born. Or so the Bemba folks of Zambia consider. In follow, it’s somewhat extra sophisticated for Shula (Susan Chardy), lately returned to Zambia and the bosom of her household from a stint overseas, solely to seek out herself anticipated to weep for a person – her late Uncle Fred – who triggered her immeasurable hurt. The second movie from Rungano Nyoni, On Turning into A Guinea Fowl is a formally daring image that blends fantasy, stylised drama and components of black comedy to discover the societal pressures that rewrite the reality.

A formally daring image that blends fantasy, stylised drama and components of black comedy 

Nyoni returns to Cannes, this time screening in Un Sure Regard, following the 2017 premiere of her debut, I Am Not A Witch, in Administrators’ Fortnight. There are shared themes between the 2 movies – the concept that ’the reality’ is usually only a lie that’s repeated loudly and confidently  – and a shared strategy. Nyoni’s surrealistic aptitude could be very a lot in proof as soon as once more. The backdrop, nonetheless, differs. Relatively than the impoverished tribal village of Witch, Guinea Fowl unfolds in an prosperous middle-class household. Nyoni’s distinctive directorial imaginative and prescient and intriguingly indirect storytelling (along with the A24 muscle behind it) ought to make this a title of curiosity on the competition circuit and maybe past.

It’s Shula who discovers her uncle’s corpse. Driving dwelling from a fancy dress social gathering, carrying a sequinned helmet and a balloon-shaped black romper swimsuit, Shula breaks off from singing alongside to her radio to look on the susceptible physique mendacity within the street. It’s not shock or grief that registers on her face, however irritation. This solely deepens with the arrival of her cousin Nsansa (Elizabeth Chisela), so drunk that her phrases have develop into glued collectively and he or she has began to blur across the edges.

Thus begins the purgatorial enterprise of getting Uncle Fred, a philandering alcoholic (and, it seems, a lot worse) who died suspiciously near the native brothel, mourned and buried. Shula initially tries to extricate herself from the circus of performative grief – she checks right into a resort the place she tries to work remotely. However her aunties, a Greek refrain designed to attract consideration to failures in familial responsibility throughout the youthful era, burst into her room and interrogate her over her conspicuous lack of disappointment. Shula’s position, the aunties inform her, is to assist her mom, Fred’s sister, presently.

Dutifully, Shula drives to the airport to select up her mom, who duly prostrates herself on the ground of the arrivals lounge in an extravagant show of paralysing disappointment, earlier than becoming a member of within the collective wailing. They mourn Fred as if he had been a saint, cackles Nsansa, somewhat than “a pervert”. Though they’ve little else in frequent, each Shula and Nsansa know from expertise what Fred was able to. What they don’t initially realise, holed up within the pantry to flee from the funeral, is the extent of Fred’s crimes.

And right here’s the rub: secrecy surrounded Fred, an abuser who preyed on the ladies within the household. However his crimes weren’t secrets and techniques. Quite the opposite, it appears as if all people within the prolonged household knew a minimum of a few of it, however collectively acted to cowl up for him. The movie could be very particular in its Zambian setting, however this theme is common – there are parallels with Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding ceremony and Thomas Vinterberg’s Festen, to call simply two.

Largely enjoying out in crowded inside areas, the movie, guided by David Gallego’s inquisitive lens, is attuned to the mercurial dynamics between characters. But lighting these areas appears to have proved a problem, with a few of the drama muted by the murkiness of the pictures.

The place the movie does impress is within the easy segues between fantasy and actuality – Shula sees her personal youthful self, staring again at her accusingly; she sees tides of floodwater claiming rooms. She remembers an academic youngsters’s TV present, titled ’Farm Membership’, that tells viewers in regards to the position of the Guinea Fowl. And she or he sees herself on this small however noisy fowl: a warning system, alerting the world round it to hazard.