So this is a Senegalese movie that’s considered to be one of the landmarks of African cinema; apparently, most of the notable African films before it had been in sort of the social realist mode — showing the social realities of societies in a near-documentary sort of way — and this was the first one to break with that, with surrealist elements and editing that cuts things together impressionistically (like at one point, as cops are chasing the protagonist, the chase is being intercut with scenes of a cow being led to the slaughterhouse; a sex scene intercuts with crashing waves, that kind of thing).

Mambéty was apparently heavily influenced by the French New Wave, and it shows; in fact, what this really seems a lot like is a Godard movie, one of those rogue-and-his-girlfriend-on-the-run things like Pierrot le Fou or the middle section of Breathless, except with 30% more supernaturalism and 400% more super-graphic scenes of cows being slaughtered which holy shit I’m like halfway to being a vegetarian now augh.

Anyway, the main gist of the story is that a young man and his college-educated girlfriend decide, in the way of young people through the ages, that their rural home sucks and is boring and stupid, and they’re going to run away to Paris. The only problem being that they don’t have the money to book a ship to Paris, so they first need to go on a bit of a crime spree, which includes stealing the clothes of a fop, ending up in a parade by accident, and of course — if we’re going to model on Godard, this is inevitable — it ends up with a motorcycle accident and tragedy.

What ultimately raises the movie above the level of New Wave pastiche is that Mambéty was also exploring the divide between “traditional” African life and increasing westernization (which really is kind of the subtext of the whole “leave for Paris” thing in a lot of ways), so there’s the contrast between the very traditional life in a village in the opening scenes, and the more modern city life later; there are scenes where riding the motorcycle along these African countryside scenes, there are Mobil oil tanks in the background; and there’s a scene on the ship where some French rich people are sneering at the primitive-ness of Dakar and how its people are like children, even as the protagonists are trying to get on that boat to get to their new life.

This feels like a movie where I’m missing a lot of cultural context, and am probably misreading scenes (for instance the part where they steal stuff from a fat, rich, effete gay man — what kind of social attitudes toward homosexuality is that scene using or subverting?); but taking it for what I can get out of it, it’s interesting and (despite all its structural similarities to Godard) unique.