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MOOLAADÉ Send This Review to a Friend
Veteran filmmaker Ousmane Sembene of Senegal has written and directed a great movie, wisely showcased by the 2004 New York Film Festival and now in commercial release.
“Moolaadé” will be fixed in your mind forever once you have experienced it. Told in the most simple, straightforward terms, it gathers momentum and eventually soars with spirit and hope even though it deals with the upsetting subject of genital mutilation of women. Don’t be put off by the topic, for the film, while striking a welcome blow aganst genital cutting, is not a polemic, doesn’t rely on undue explicitness and ultimately is about so much more. The film becomes a microcosm of male power, women’s struggle against oppression, conflict with cultural heritage and by extension, any battle by the oppressed against the oppressor. All this is accomplished in emotionally involving human terms.
“Moolaadé” takes place in an African village. Collé, played with warmth and stalwartness by Fatoumata Coulibaly, stubbornly has refused to allow her daughter to be genitally cut, as is the custom. Four young girls have fled the prospect of the new round of cutting, and Collé has given them sanctuary, which is what the film title means. As long as she proclaims protection during the ritual period, the girls are safe in her care. But the tension builds as the ominous band of women who carry out the tradition of mutilation according to age-old practices are determined to wrest the girls from their protector.
The film shows the men of the village, rattled by Collé’s revolt, battling to hold the power over their women, even taking their radios away to keep them from being contaminated by ways of the outside world. When one of the refugee girls is tricked into going away and mutilated with disastrous consequences, the women grow more united in their resistance to domination on that issue and in general.
Sembene’s work becomes so powerful because he leads us slowly into daily life of the village and introduces us to characters with whom we can become involved. There is Mercenaire (Dominique T. Zeïda), who has a local business selling assorted goods to villagers and although he’s a charlatan in his dealings, he also has an inner character that will be tested. There is the young man who has become rich in France and has returned to marry Collé’s daughter, but runs into opposition from his father to marrying a girl who has not been cut, and this leads to a father-son confrontation that also represents a revolt against old ways.
The film is photographed realistically to make us feel we are really in the village, and help us to be swept up in the characters, the escalating drama and the issues involved. At the age of 81, Sembene has made one of his most auspicious films with the wisdom and talent that comes from a lifetime of honing his skills. This is one of the works of 2004 not to be missed. A New Yorker Films release.
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