XALA

Ousmane Sembene, 1975


The single most powerful sign of the absurdity of Senegalese’s upper class infatuation with the culture of its former oppressor can be a mundane thing like water. A bottle of Evian takes up centre space in the late, great Ousmane Sembene’s 1975 film Xala. The title, translating into curse or impotence from Senegal’s native language of Wolof, is given to a film that explores a country finding its feet in a freshly established independence. Caught between tradition and Westernisation, and making wrong choices in each direction, the new government is incapable of action and so, in the more literal sense of the title, is the films protagonist.

Businessman El Hadji Aboucader Beye (Thierno Leye) is part of a group that overthrows the local colonial authorities taking their place in the chamber of commerce. African people in traditional brightly coloured togas dance in the busy and buzzing streets, the sounds of drums fill the air, as El Hadji and his colleagues clear out the French official’s offices, celebrating a new beginning. The promise of change is broken all too quickly when in the next scene the togas have changed into Western suits and those wearing one receives a briefcase full of money from their predecessor.

El Hadji wholeheartedly embraces European culture, putting it above his own. He drinks two litres of Evian every day. However when it comes to taking a third wife he reminds his critics that colonialism does not need to make him lose his African traditions. After the wedding he finds himself under the curse of impotence though and wants to find who cast it on him and how to get rid of it. He is exposed within minutes of the film as being a hypocritical upper class achiever and yet we follow him as he becomes more and more frantic in his search for a cure. From doctors to medicine men, everyone is consulted and when El Hadji sits in the dust between mud huts in his expensively tailored suit he is more out of place than ever, more so that the deformed beggars whom he had roughly removed from outside his shop. It is this group of outsiders, roaming the film like a parallel society, which may offer a solution in the end to El Hadji after they raid his fridge leaving only a bottle Evian which is as untouchable to them as they are to the likes of El Hadji. The African beggars’ pride and wisdom is at all times higher than that of El Hadji who even uses the French water to wash his car.

Sembene has adapted the film from his own novel and his biting sarcasm translates perfectly to the screen. Vibrant colours enhance the constant confrontation between opposites forced into the mise-en-scene. Beggars and newly rich, European versus African, interiors and exteriors, cars and animals give the film has a restless feel, exuberating the promise of renewal and the pitfalls of what might go wrong. Returning to this story emphasizes its importance to Sembene’s work. He reduces the entire patriarchy of his country to a corrupt, ignorant and sexually inadequate little man, thus attacking the self proclaimed new leaders of Senegal for being politically as impotent as on any other level. Sembene was a man with a mission, a cinematic revolutionary and artist laying part of the foundation for a growing, exciting African film industry. Like his novels, his films told about a great scepticism toward colonial influences and about female empowerment as necessity for a truly independent Senegal and its accompanying identity defining art. Exploring a country and society in change, he challenged old colonial, power and gender relationships.

Women have played a vital role in Sembene’s work and he has created some of the most sophisticated female representations in cinema today. Xala bears no exception. El Hadji is surrounded by five women. A daughter, three wives a new mother-in-law and a secretary. They run his life and while he might think that he is in control, it becomes very clear that he is not. Not even when he slaps his first wife’s daughter Rama (Miriam Niang) does he pose threat or indeed authority, it rather underlines just how pathetic he is. Rama functions as El Hadji’s counterweight and appears to be the mouthpiece for the filmmaker’s own world views. She is educated, progressive and deeply sceptic of the colonial power’s promises. She speaks Wolof, disapproves of her father’s third marriage and urges her mother to get a divorce. She also strongly refuses to drink imported water. Being the daughter, she embodies a new generation, the real future of the country, where the old and the new have merged and struck a healthy balance. Rama is willing to reject oppressive traditions to accomplish a modern development of Senegal, she does not generally refuse Western influences but unlike her father she makes the right choices according to, hopefully, not only Sembene. The attributed place to the Muslim woman at the family home is negated by the absence thereof, each wife lives in her own villa, each is a status symbol for El Hadji rather than family. To the women he is provider, neither lover (literally) nor loved. Sembene said that “Africa can't develop without the participation of its women. Our culture used to relegate women to just a minor role. Now women are starting to take a very active part in society...in the society we are going to build, women will play an important role.” Consequently Rama becomes bearer of the writer/director’s own vision.

Sembene became a writer after being a dock worker and soldier among many other things. Despite writing in French he never considered himself part of the intellectual elite that he found hindering the Senegalese struggle for independence. In film he found a medium with which he could reach the illiterate and non-French speaking audience that he aimed for. He found an individual way of expression; his films have a distinct style that is very different from European cinema taking its sway from African art and storytelling. His death in 2007 was a great loss not only for African cinema.