For Jade

Although it carries an asterisk, the Angolan film For Jade comes in recommended. It has already proven to be a hit with the local audience and has toured a few film weeks where international viewers could evaluate its magic. Why has it been a sensation? The answer just might be that its very magic is its lack of cinematic magic.

The film’s acting, editing, screenwriting, and sound design all seem to be done with the most rudimentary tools and a matching cinematic sensibility. From moment to moment, the film shifts genre and tone and its characters act in a manner that has no basis in their previous behavior. And yet.

The way the film will proceed is demonstrated early on when its main characters, Suzana, an Angolan woman, and Bakari, a Malian shopkeeper, meet in the latter’s shop. A couple of security officials have been extorting the man for a while but on this day, he is rescued by a girl who tells them off by brandishing an ID card and declaring herself their superior. It’s one of the film’s first implausibilities that these men take her word for it, are cowed and disappear. It won’t be the last or the most egregious. It’s a badly choreographed scene with unconvincing acting from everyone involved, but it has a certain charm.

Things move fast. The next thing we know Bakari is eating at her place while her parents watch. Next thing they are dancing the kizomba. Next thing, it’s a wedding. Things just get thrown in by writer-director Baruch Nsangu Tadisi. The screenplay doesn’t waste time telling us when they have a kid; the kid is just thrown in a random scene in the middle of a random conversation. Thankfully, we are told the kid’s name. It’s the name in the title: Jade.

All of this has happened in the film’s first half, which plays like a romance. Somewhere in its future is a domestic drama and an action caper.

To take us to the next genre, Bakari’s dad passes away and he has to go arrange the burial. But he is from Mali, so home for him is another country. Suzana wants to go with him briefly. Her parents are against it. Her husband is also against it. It’s not quite clear why the parents are against her making the trip to be with her husband, but Bakari’s own reasons soon become transparent: Suzana is not his only wife.

That’s no spoiler. In fact, it might be the hook used to bring in viewers. It barely matters too because there is more to come from the film, including an extremely low-budget, high-stakes pursuit and a religious clash. Like many popular soaps, For Jade has a surfeit of incidents; it’s not quite right to call what happens in the film plot.

And yet, it may be that it is all of these elements—the action, the polygamy revelation, the religion angle—that has propelled the film to its commercial success. Very few of these things, especially the dramatizing of religious tension wrapped in a love story gone bad, are available anywhere else in Angolan or maybe even African cinema. That’s a lesson for the more artistically accomplished projects: every once in a while, maybe consider telling stories with some social relevance?

Also, whatever else might be said about the crude nature of the For Jade, in its own illogical way, the story moves and moves. There are no fancy shots and angles and idiosyncratic colour palette choices. This is barebones (and maybe bare-brained) movie-making. Most film cultures have something of the sort — the kind of filmmaking that is on the opposite side of the mainstream for all the wrong reasons and yet becomes popular for at least one right reason: a significant amount of people have found value in the story it tells, however badly.

There are talks of a sequel. This time, if the rumours are to be believed, Suzana will fall in love with a Chinese, a move anyone familiar with the influx of Chinese business into Africa will understand. The entire enterprise is somewhat hilarious. But betting that lightning will not strike a second time for Tadisi is a risky move.

Director, screenplay: Baruch Nsangu Tadisi
Cast: Marta Tomás, Milton Kilandambuca, Aureliano Quaresma, Constância Lopes
Language: Portuguese, French
Venue: FIC Luanda (National Competition)
Duration: 75 minutes