Simultaneously gripping, disconcerting, and chaotic, Djibril Diop Mambéty’s Touki Bouki is an exhilarating cinematic ride. The 1973 drama — the first full-length film by the Senegalese director — is the fantastical narration of a young couple in Dakar, eager to escape the Senegalese capital for the allure of Paris. It’s a character-driven film in many ways, primarily centered on the couple’s adventures, but it is also a subtle visual examination of the urbanism of post-independence Dakar, where the city and its architecture are essential fixtures in a surreal storyline.
As Touki Bouki’s protagonists, Mory and Anta, scheme to obtain money for that lucrative trip to Paris, they are backdropped by a city in postcolonial flux, a settlement of contradictions and contrasts. In Mambéty’s 1968 Contras’ City, this is much more explicit, a mockumentary that juxtaposes Dakar’s grand colonial architecture with vibrant snapshots of the wooden and corrugated-iron-roof structures that house tailors and barbers. But with Touki Bouki’s jumpy, stop-start cinematic style, the processes of construction become one avenue with which to represent this postcolonial flux.
