Saloum (2021)

Warning: there will be spoilers, but I do try to keep them vague this time around!

2003. A trio of mercenaries and occasional heroes (depending on one’s perspective) flee a coup in Guinea-Bissau with a load of gold and a Mexican drug dealer they are a supposed to deliver to Dakar. Chaka (Yann Gael), Rafa (Roger Sallah) and Minuit (Mentor Ba) seem to be running out of luck, though, for the small airplane supposed to get them to Ghana has fuel line problems that cause them to land in the Sine-Saloum Delta. Looking for fuel, resin and relaxation, the trio and Felix (Renaud Farah) their drug lord passenger end up at the small vacation village of Omar (Bruno Henry). Chaka seems to have been at the place before, though Omar doesn’t remember having met him before.

It’s a rather interesting little place: instead of money, guests are expected to trade some chores or service for their food and lodging. These services range from cleaning up to shooting poachers in the behind with BB guns, as it turns out. It’s all quaintly utopian and charming, but trouble does seem to follow our protagonists around. One of the other guests, deaf-mute – interestingly, all three mercenaries speak sign language - Awa (Evelyne Ily Juhen) recognizes them and wants a seat on their plane as the prize for her silence about hem. And the latest arrival turns out to be cop on the hunt for them.

Though, given what happens once supernatural forces awaken after the mid-film plot reveal and a bout of violence, these turn out to be minor problems.

This Senegalese action/horror movie with Western (well, the titles call it Southern) elements by French-Congolese director Jean Luc Herbulot is quite the thing. It takes a simple premise and a straightforward narrative with pretty archetypal characters and adds complexities and depth at the margins of its plots, revealing the depths of its at first broad (though effectively broad) drawn characters in half sentences. At the same time, there’s no fat at all in Saloum’s bones. The pacing never flags, the narrative never stops pushing forward; everything just becomes more interesting and inventive the longer the movie goes on, until it arrives at the conclusion about the nature of revenge that you’d expect. Yet still it finds emotional resonance in the old and the expected, because all of its incessantly smart decisions in handling its characters and plot pay off in the end.

Formally, Herbulot does certainly show a certain affinity for early Tarantino. Unlike a lot of those trying to imitate QT, he seems to have learned more interesting lessons from the  man. So instead of the love for quotes, needle drops and smart(mouthed) dialogue, we witness the ability to draw characters archetypically and sharply and to then fill in all of the actual human bits that go beyond this once the coolness of everyone has been established. Quite a few Tarantino inspired filmmakers miss that last and most important bit, which retroactively tends to destroy the coolness, as well. Of course, Herbulot clearly isn’t setting out to just do the QT, but  fuses influences like Tarantino, Westerns (particularly of the Italian persuasion, though I would certainly not be surprised by a bit of Jodorowsky), the particular sibling of Magical Realism that seems to pop up in very diverse parts of the African continent, the conventions of action cinema as well as Senegalese mythology interpreted as horror, until all of this becomes his very own thing and style. Stylistically, Herbulot does favour a much faster editing rhythm than many of these forebears; his visual approach, particularly in the first act feels rather more pop, in a very conscious and controlled manner.

I’m not talking about the horror parts of the film much here because they are so interesting, inventive (at least when seen by a guy from Germany who knows too little about the entities our protagonists encounter and isn’t in the mood to pretend a bit of googling makes him an expert, at least this week) and surprising, spoiling anyone’s first encounter with them would be churlish. So let’s just say they are creepy, cheaply yet well realized on an effects level, work well when approached from an action horror angle, and also resonate effectively with several characters internal struggles on a thematic level. But don’t worry, even though particularly the ending really doesn’t leave any doubt at one specific way to read what the supernatural entities here mean at least to/for Chaka, they aren’t just metaphors, this being a movie that has some serious things to say but which also likes to have and be a lot of fun.