by Julian Wood
Worth: $18.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Abou Sangaré, Nina Meurisse, Alpha Oumar Sow
Intro:
… a powerful human drama …
This involving story of immigrant struggles set in Paris, has a sort of double meaning loaded into the title. The eponymous Souleymane (Abou Sangaré) is a young man from Guinea in West Africa, who is trying to settle in France; he is part of the great economic migration which fuels so many Western nations. It is the story of Souleymane but also a story by Souleymane. And this nuance matters. Souleymane has to tell his story in a certain way. He has been getting help (for a fee of course) from people who specialise in coaching African immigrants into parroting an account that will persuade the immigration officers. Partly this is a lie, so it is not a straight story in either direction. At stake is the right to stay and work legally.
We join Souleymane a few days away from his decisive interview. To him, this feels like a once-off exam that he cannot fail. Throughout, he is beset by troubles as he tries to eke out an existence as a push bike food courier in the busy streets of Pairs. If any small thing goes wrong, then the effects will cascade through his life, making his knife-edge existence even more precarious.
Writer-Director Boris Lojkine skilfully keeps the focus tightly on Souleymane (Sangare is in more or less every frame). We suffer with him, feeling his increasing frustration as he is tossed on an ocean of forces beyond his control. The film plays like a sort of thriller. It is not dissimilar, in terms of its inexorable pacing, to Eric Gravels 2021 film Full Time in which a working-class female worker has to race across Paris and is always in danger of being timed out. Another, suitably humanistic parallel is Ken Loach’s famous recent study of the oppressive and impossible schedules of delivery workers in Sorry We Missed You. Both films share a sense of the quiet desperation of the lives of those who are marginalised. No matter how hard they try, the game is still rigged against them.
The ethnic dimension of this one adds another important element. Souleymane seems to exist in a post-colonial world, mixing only with fellow Africans (some of whom are hardened and effectively preying upon their compatriots). The only time that he interacts with white people is in the form of complaining customers or when he is answerable to state functionaries.
These political or social commentary elements are an important frame around the tense action, but Lojkine is careful not to let the film fall into becoming a campaign piece. Thanks to the authentic playing, and especially the soulful and affecting performance of Sangare, the film works as a powerful human drama, and we go with Souleymane every step of the way.
