Souleymane’s Story Tells a Dardenne-Esque Political Fable with a Thriller’s Urgency

Souleymane’s Story delivers a political fable with all of the grit and urgency of a thriller. It follows a Guinean food-delivery driver (Abou Sangare, sensible in his first display screen function) who rides his bike via Paris’ busy streets with alarming haste. En route from consumer to consumer, he recites a script he plans to carry out the subsequent day at his asylum assembly. His pay is decided by what number of jobs he completes, however a slice of these commissions are taken by the person who operates his account––and when cash is required (Souleymane stays in arrears to the person who wrote his script), he’s not all the time straightforward to pin down. Every day ticks like a time bomb, main as much as when the final bus leaves for Souleymane’s refugee shelter. Miss it and he sleeps tough. Run afoul of the supply app’s nameless moderators and his solely supply of earnings vanishes. Run afoul of the police and he’s on his personal.

This nerve-shredder is the most recent socio-political treatise from Boris Lojkine, director of Hope (which adopted a younger lady’s makes an attempt to to migrate from Cameroon to Europe) and Camille (a biopic of the French photojournalist Camille Lepage, who died whereas masking the battle in Central African Republic in 2014). Souleymane’s Story premiered in Un Sure Regard, the place each Sangare and Lojkine have been rightly rewarded for his or her efforts. It was, for my cash, the perfect discovery of this 12 months’s Cannes Movie Competition and, considerably sarcastically, precisely the form of work that used to outline it. For the reason that Dardenne brothers’ win with Rosetta in 1999, a minimum of 4 Palme d’Ors have gone to titles of Rosetta‘s ilk, however that model of filmmaking has change into desperately retro. Souleymane suggests there could also be life in it but.

Alongside with Sangare’s electrical lead flip, Lojkine’s movie succeeds the place others faltered in a few essential locations. Shot by DP Tristan Galand (who labored the digital camera division on a variety of Dardenne tasks, together with the notably related Two Days, One Evening), Souleymane has a distinctive visible language and a powerful degree of craft. (The picture, shot from simply behind, of Soulymane zipping down Parisian bike lanes was some of the memorable in Cannes this 12 months.) Much more obvious is the thought-about method Lojkine applies strain, by no means pummeling his protagonist too exhausting, and in addition structuring the narrative like a Rube Goldberg Machine: if Souleyman can merely be left to do his job, make his deliveries, gather his pay, get some sleep, and make it to his interview on-time, all could also be nicely and good; but when one domino fails to fall, will it’s sufficient to breed disaster?

Better of all, Lojkine’s movie comes with a refreshing generosity of spirit. There are bad-faith actors and opportunists on this world, the movie admits, however the true enemy is within the system: how it’s failing to guard folks, each by way of immigration and gig-economy work. And in opposition to the chances, that lack of a actual on-screen antagonist leaves room for a nice deal of heat: even a couple of scenes that begin off on the unsuitable foot (an anxious anticipate a meals order, having to trek up 5 flights of stairs) are given endearing twists. And one can sense the extent of analysis that’s put in: the largely genial vibe of scenes within the refugee shelter; the second when a refrain of alarms go off in the course of the evening to sign when beds are made out there for the next night; or the heart-wrenching second when Souleymane calls the love he left behind. Like most issues in Lojkine’s movie, all of it rings vitally true.

Souleymane’s Story screened on the Toronto Worldwide Movie Competition.