Atlantics: Cannes Favourite a Composite of Magical Realism and Romance... like Romeo & Juliet if Juliet Lived
By Liam Lacey
Rating: A-minus
A magic realist fantasy, a ghost story, a love story and political allegory, Atlantics packs a deceptive amount of complexity in a gauzy, slender film.
The debut feature from Sengalese-French actress, Mati Diop, Atlantics won the Grand Prize runner-up award at Cannes this year. The Dakar-set film is about a young woman’s coming-of-age, when the young man she loves joins a group of economic refugees in an open-boat on the treacherous week-long journey to the Spanish-owned Canary Islands.
Mame Bineta Sané stars as Ada, torn between a fleeing refugee boyfriend and a rich arranged marriage
The Paris-raised actress-director Diop (she starred in Claire Denis’ 2008 film, 35 Shots of Rum) has made several well-regarded short films. But this first feature, which has been picked up for viewing on Netflix a week after its theatrical opening, represents a major international breakthrough.
Strikingly shot by Claire Mathon, the film immerses us in a world of hazy ocean-fronts, the writhing green sea, contrasted with the electric oranges and blues in the night scenes, all accompanied by a trancy, sinuous Afro-electronic score from composer Fatima Al Qadiri.
The style evolves from social realism to poetic reverie. We begin on the outskirts of Dakar where a massive Dubai-style office tower is being constructed. The African construction workers, who have not been paid in three months, confront their foreman, without success.
Later, one of the workers, Souleiman (Ibrahima Traoré) meets a 17-year-old girl, Ada (Mame Bineta Sane). When an attempted tryst at the beach is interrupted, they agree to meet that night at Dior’s, an ocean-front club run by an independent businesswoman, Dior (Nicole Sougou). Dior is a central figure in a group of women who are both peer group and mentors, and who represent a spectrum of degrees of independence and conservative conformity.
Both Souleiman and Ada are keeping secrets from each other. Ada’s friend, Mariama (Mariama Gassama), admonishes her for getting involved with Souleiman when she’s about to be married to well-to-do Omar (Babacar Sylla). But the nightclub date doesn’t take place.
By the time Ada sneaks out of her family home and arrives at Dior, the women are distraught: A group of young men, including Souleiman, have set out for Spain in an open boat.
Though heart-broken and fearful, Ada succumbs to family and peer pressure to go through with an arranged wedding to Omar. Some of her friends are full of envy and pleasure at her good luck. On the positive side, she’ll live in a garish new mansion -- and Omar spends most of his time in Europe.
But strange things begin to happen: Before the wedding night, Omar’s massive white bed bursts into flame. Other fires break out around town. There are rumours that Souleiman has been seen back in town and may be a suspect in the fires. There are other, more credible rumours that all the men in the boat have been drowned at sea.
A young policeman, Issa (Amadou Mbow), who has heard rumours that Ada and Souleiman were an item, begins an investigation, made trickier because of apparent supernatural interference. As well as the outbreaks of arson, various people – including the policeman – start coming down with a fever.
One night, a group of women, apparently possessed by the ghosts of the drowned men, moving like zombies and with pupils of their eyes missing, go to the home of the construction boss and terrify him into paying the men’s back wages. One night, Ada even gets a text message from the apparently dead Souleiman, giving a whole new meaning to the term, “getting ghosted.”
Atlantis is, in some ways too slender. The narrative is fragmentary, the actors non-professional and the characters thinly drawn. But it’s a wonderfully audacious concept: A version of the Romeo and Juliet where Juliet survives, and finds purpose from her suppressed grief. Wrapped in ghostly images and flickering light, Atlantics is about events told to the world through flat, bright TV chirons, wrapped in the soft clothing of a fable.
Atlantics. Directed by Mati Diop. Written by Mati Diop and Olivier Demangel. Starring: Mame Bineta Sané, Amadou Mbow, Ibrahima Traoré, Nicole Sougou. Atlantics opens at the TIFF Bell Lightbox on Nov. 22 and is available on Netflix on Nov. 29.