CIFF Review: Grisgris Wins Us Over
By Steven Pate in Arts & Entertainment on Oct 14, 2013 7:30PM
This is part of Chicagoist's coverage of the Chicago International Film Festival.
The 49th Chicago International Film Festival opened last week with the usual jetsam of glossy prestige films floating atop a tide of unknown films from fingers-crossed hopefuls with only one or two shots to connect with audiences or distributors. It is those oft-overlooked films that you might not get to see on a big screen where CIFF succeeds or fails. Our favorite find from the festival's first weekend is a film from Chad, Grisgris.
From the film's opening scene below, you can't take your eyes off young Chadian dancer Grisgris, played by Souleymane Démé. As the crowd (led vocally by a neighborhood gangster) cheers him ecstatically on, he transforms his lithe frame and long arms into a kinetic flurry that culminates in the whipping of his paralyzed leg around his body like a piece of fabric. He may work hard at his dancing, but his days are spent toiling in his father-in-law's shop. Two events—Grisgris' catching the eye of the beautiful but seemingly unattainable Mimi (played by Anaïs Monory) and his father-in-law's sudden mountain of medical bills—lead him to dangerous employments in the service of the gangster.
Démé's puppy-dog eyes and shy charisma are the irresistible force pulling the viewer through the movie; his perseverance and his willingness to sacrifice it forces you to root for this classic underdog. We wanted more of his startling and joyful dance sequences. Director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun has captured the story in stately and beautiful imagery. There are only fleeting acknowledgements made to the difficulty of life in N'Djamena or the effects of recent strife in Chad: the persistence of dangerous smuggling operations; the lack of jobs; the inadequacy of health care. This is a character-driven story refreshingly and attractively rendered.
Without spoiling the plot, we would just say that the ending of the film comes off as perhaps a little too simplistic and casts a shadow over what came before. If recent critiques of the Breaking Bad finale can be offered as comparison, sometimes tying up loose ends too neatly comes across like wish-fulfillment to deliver narrative satisfaction. Unlike in his much-discussed A Screaming Man, Haroun doesn't telescope out from his protagonist's situation to map the larger socio-economic or political forces that give context to the conflict, something we would have been intrigued to see through a more nuanced investigation of the gangster Houssa. These shortcomings didn't prevent us from enjoying the film, merely left us wondering "what if."
Grisgris was the only African film at Cannes, where it justly won an award for its cinematography and will be Chad's submission for the Foreign Oscar. The film doesn't represent the leap forward we were hoping for after A Screaming Man, but it is a joy to watch. And if we ever need to be disabused of the notion that we can dance, watching what Démé can do with only one good leg is just the ticket.