On Becom­ing A Guinea Fowl review – sear­ing and disorientating

One evening, while dri­ving home from a friend’s fan­cy dress par­ty, Shu­la (Susan Chardy) dis­cov­ers a dead boy in the mid­dle of a desert­ed road. On clos­er inspec­tion, she realis­es it’s her Uncle Fred. Being a lev­el-head­ed young woman who is good in a cri­sis, Shu­la calls her father for advice. After ask­ing her to send him mon­ey for rent, Dad assures her he’ll arrive at the scene short­ly to assist (but she’ll need to pay for his taxi too). The tragi­com­ic open­ing scene of Rungano Nyoni’s sec­ond fea­ture is a micro­cosm of what will unfold dur­ing the film; Shu­la – restrained, effi­cient, mature – is sad­dled with the increas­ing­ly man­ic demands and expec­ta­tions of her extend­ed fam­i­ly, who descend en-mass on her mother’s house to mourn…and stake their claim to Uncle Fred’s estate.

Part of Shula’s funer­al duties includes wran­gling two of her more volatile cousins, Nsansa (Eliz­a­beth Chis­ela) and Bupe (Esther Singi­ni). When Nsansa makes a shock­ing con­fes­sion about Uncle Fred while drunk, she is quick to laugh it off, but as more and more fam­i­ly mem­bers descend on the home, it becomes a pres­sure cook­er, with ten­sions between the elder and younger gen­er­a­tions begin­ning to esca­late, and ani­mos­i­ty towards Fred’s young wid­ow grow­ing expo­nen­tial­ly. There are many things that the fam­i­ly not only choose to not dis­cuss, but active­ly buries for the sake of self-preser­va­tion; Fred’s death acts as a great flood, unearthing the bod­ies buried beneath. It’s only when the three cousins unite – along with Fred’s ostracised wid­ow – that they are able to start piec­ing togeth­er some hard truths about the past.

Build­ing on the explo­rations of mob men­tal­i­ty and what is gained and lost in the rig­or­ous preser­va­tion of fam­i­ly and cul­tur­al tra­di­tion that she demon­strat­ed in her debut fea­ture I Am Not A Witch, Nyoni is fast estab­lish­ing her­self as a tru­ly orig­i­nal sto­ry­teller, com­bin­ing the fan­tas­ti­cal and bru­tal­ly ground­ed to cre­ate a film that feels unique­ly dis­qui­et­ing. For it’s not so much that the rest of the fam­i­ly were unaware that one of their num­ber was abus­ing young women, but rather that they con­spired to cov­er it up, con­cerned with their own image and the preser­va­tion of rep­u­ta­tion above the lives of others.

As her rel­a­tives teari­ly eulo­gise Uncle Fred with one eye on the inher­i­tance, Shula’s con­cerns and grow­ing anger are repeat­ed­ly waved away – even by her own father. Instead, she is expect­ed to be a duti­ful daugh­ter. In one scene, as she fran­ti­cal­ly looks for Bupe, var­i­ous obliv­i­ous male rel­a­tives repeat­ed­ly ask her to fetch plates of food for them. Shu­la, who has nev­er known any dif­fer­ent, can­not yet push back against how her fam­i­ly have always done things.

Anchored by Susan Chardy’s restrained per­for­mance, On Becom­ing A Guinea Fowl might touch on hot-but­ton themes of sex­u­al vio­lence, misog­y­ny and famil­ial cycles of abuse, but Rungano Nyoni finds her own intrigu­ing lan­guage to explore them. Con­sid­er, for exam­ple, the film’s fab­u­lous­ly odd title, the sig­nif­i­cance of which becomes clear through glimpses of a children’s tele­vi­sion pro­gramme – Nyoni weaves alle­go­ry with real­ism in a man­ner that nods to her Zam­bian and Welsh her­itage, both pos­sess­ing a rich folk­lore history.

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