A modern love story of contrasts set in an exotic land.
Atlantics
Grade: B
Director: Mati Diop (A Thousand Suns)
Screenplay: Diop, Olivier Demangel (Towards the Battle
Cast: Mame Bineta Sane, Traore
Runtime: 1 hr 46 min
By: John DeSando
Set against the contrasts of modern Dakar, both poverty and progress, Netflix's Atlantics is an endearing love story and a challenging ghost tale. It speaks of love’s enduring allure and the cost of true love with the modern world’s disdain for simplicity and virtue.
Ada (Mame Bineta Sane) loves Souleiman (Traore), a construction worker who hasn’t been paid in three months. They are beautiful people worthy of Romeo and Juliet and just as star-crossed. Ada is doomed to marry the rich Omar (Babacar Sylla), a situation envied by almost everyone but Ada, for whom the rich life with a man she doesn’t love holds no allure.
So far so good because she’ll marry Omar while Souleiman is lost at sea going to Spain, where he hoped for wages. That’s about the most sense in the film because the strange reappearance of Souleiman later in the film will challenge your sense of logic while he appears with others as ghosts, who are probably responsible for the fires set at Ada’s new home.
Director Mati Diop, with a gift for weaving the real with the magical, takes a leisurely cinematic stroll through the tragedy, keeping the dialogue simple enough to read at the bottom of the screen while the lovers are talking or loving. The images of Muejiza Tower help to emphasize the theme of change and empowerment.
The investigation of the fires and strange appearances gets mixed leading to slight confusion of identities. Yet, that’s the point: the loss of true love can upend any life, and the confusion of friends and family about a marriage can contribute to the tragedy that may ensue.
Meanwhile multiple, maybe too many, images of the rolling surf and setting sun can crowd the screen with too much imagery and not enough insightful dialogue. Atlantics is a lyrical film with classic ideas about love and change, simple and strong while it stays in reality. The magical doesn’t work that well when so much crushing reality dominates this parched but progressive landscape.
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.rr.com
