Tournees Francophone Film Festival: Félicité

Félicité is a nightclub singer in a little bar in Kinshasa who lives alone
with her teenage son Samo. When Samo severely injures himself in a
motorcycle accident, Félicité must find a way to raise the money to pay
for an operation or allow her son’s leg to be amputated. The originality
and power of French-Senegalese director Alain Gomis’s fourth feature
lies in the way it transcends this simple against-the-clock narrative,
the kind of story that has driven films of social realism from Bicycle
Thieves to the Dardenne brothers, to create a shifting, complex portrait
of the struggles, joys, and imagination of a modern-day heroine—and
by extension, of the city she lives in. Filming in the Democratic Repub-
lic of Congo, a country previously unfamiliar to him, Gomis confirms
the tremendous promise of his earlier films, walking a porous line
between dream and waking life, magic and bureaucracy, observation
and fantasy, that at its best suggests a new cinematic language. Alive
with the diverse sounds of various Kinshasa musicians, Félicité is an
engrossing, deep dive into the days and, especially, nights of a city by
turns nightmarish and surprisingly radiant.

 

Musical/Drama

French with English subtitles