Banel & Adama review – gor­geous but frus­trat­ing cin­e­ma as fairytale

Banel (Khady Mane) and Adama (Mamadou Dial­lo) are a beau­ti­ful cou­ple, intro­duced on the arid plains of Sene­gal, clad in yel­low and red respec­tive­ly. They float through their day’s work of cow-herd­ing in a har­mo­nious, almost dream­like state. Banel clos­es her eyes against the blis­ter­ing sun, hid­ing from real­i­ty by find­ing mean­ing in the flash­ing lights, or phosphenes, left behind in her vision. In this open­ing sequence, the pair exist in a mon­tage of almost stock videos, in pri­ma­ry colours and lens flare, expe­ri­enc­ing the world in high definition.

Noth­ing can stay gold­en for­ev­er, alas, and as they come home to their vil­lage, they find social, spir­i­tu­al and super­sti­tion bar­ri­ers to their inde­pen­dence as a cou­ple. We learn that Banel had to mar­ry Adama’s old­er broth­er, Yero, and that their love sto­ry only came to be after Yero drowned in a well. Adama, as the remain­ing male heir, has been trained to become chief, but as he rejects the role in favour of his wife’s dreams to move away.

As such, an atmos­phere of unrest in the com­mu­ni­ty inten­si­fies. In Islam, when some­one pass­es away we do not say ​“Rest In Peace,” instead the trans­la­tion is, ​“We are all from God and to Him we return”. While it does not mean rein­car­na­tion, it does mean birth isn’t the begin­ning, nor is death the end, and every­thing is God’s will. The over­whelm­ing nature of this sen­ti­ment comes through in the small Mus­lim Sene­galese vil­lage in which Banel & Adama is set. As a drought hits, the rain­bow palette of the start is replaced with the washed-out white of sun-bleached, dried and cracked earth, and the vil­lage ques­tions whether the pow­er cou­ple are being test­ed by God for their bold deci­sion to stake out a new life elsewhere.

It takes every­thing for Banel to remain stead­fast, and she uses their names, the title of the film, as a mantra for strength, while oth­ers, like Banel’s twin broth­er Racine, seek refuge in the Qur’an, tout­ing ​“rea­son over heart”. So the pres­sure to fold is over­whelm­ing. Khady Mane is mag­net­ic on screen, nar­row­ing her eyes at any obsta­cles in her path, from pes­ter­ing old­er women ask­ing why she doesn’t have chil­dren a year into her mar­riage, to crit­ters (most­ly birds and lizards) that she cat­a­pults into obliv­ion with­out blink­ing for dis­turb­ing her peace.

While beau­ti­ful, the impres­sion left by Banel & Adama is con­fus­ing. Like the fairy tale Adama tells at the start of the film about a fish­er­man who can talk to sirens, the end­ing feels trun­cat­ed. That moment in the script feels like a micro­cosm of the whole film, where ini­tial­ly impact­ful motifs remain unde­vel­oped and don’t lead to any high­er significance.

For instance, the repeat­ed sym­bol of a child who seem­ing­ly stares into Banel’s soul every­where she turns, gets more frus­trat­ing­ly mean­ing­less over the course of the film. An admirable over­ar­ch­ing theme of Banel remain­ing tri­umphant and true to her­self is pushed to exhaus­tion, mak­ing resent­ment fes­ter for an oth­er­wise respectable sub-90-minute run­time. Life or cin­e­ma doesn’t have to be sat­is­fac­to­ry, but here, love­ly details feel dis­card­ed or lazi­ly left up to the viewer’s imag­i­na­tion, rather than open-end­ed for wider interpretation.