Categories: Reviews

Review of ‘Mali Twist’: love in the Mali of the 60s

The veteran and committed French filmmaker Robert Guédiguian temporarily leaves the streets of his native Marseille.

    You have to love Guédiguian. Basically because he firmly believes in what counts and knows how to transmit it like few others. That is why we forgive him for his didactic pruritus, his ideological excesses, his tendency to demagoguery, his master pose. ‘Mali twist’ is pure cinema. And it is because of the universality of its emotions, because of the classicism of its love storyfor the living portrait of this post-colonial Mali that is opening up to an unlikely socialist revolution.

    The director, as in his best works, revels in the simplicity of a refined style, although he knows well that good intentions almost always lead to cul-de-sac of fatality. And his chronicle of this Bamako that throbs to the rhythm of twist and rock and roll recovers, without looking for it, the essence of titles as pleasant as ‘Grita’ (Jeffrey Hornaday, 1991) or ‘Rebeldes del swing’ (Thomas Carter, 1993). Music as fuel for a revolution (political, social and romantic) doomed to sink, but as irresistible as breathing.

    To wonder what C. Tangana and Rosalía would do in the Africa of the sixties

    The worst: when the director becomes infected with the naive idealism of Samba.

    DATA SHEET

    Address: Robert Guediguian Distribution: Stephane Bak, Dioucounda Koma, Issaka Sawadogo, Alicia Da Luz Gomes, Bakary Diombera Country: France Year: 2021 Release date: 8–07-2022 Gender: Drama Script: Robert Guediguian Duration: 125 minutes

    Synopsis: It focuses on the characters of Samba and Lara. Samba, a young socialist, falls in love with the energetic Lara during one of her missions in the jungle. To escape her forced marriage, she secretly runs away with him to the city. But Lara’s husband will not allow it and the Revolution will soon bring them painful disappointments while they dream of a future together.

    Source: Fotogramas