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Review

The opening credits roll over images of a joyous Senegalese wedding celebration. The scene shifts to an everyday morning. Mati (Niang) is known as Madame Brouette in the Niayes Theokeer market area where she lives and works. Her drunken husband Naago (Sadikh Bâ) rolls up in a cab, wearing a tight red satin evening dress; it is the day after Tajaboon, the holiday when men dress like women, and women dress like men. Naago is a policeman for whom shakedowns are his major source of income. They argue, the camera backs out of their dwelling, shots are fired. As Naago staggers bleeding through the door, the crowd erupts with commemorative songs of praise. When the police arrive, Mati, holding tightly her two young children, says she did it, she had to do it. But as the story is recounted, it becomes obvious that, for all the excellent reasons she had to shoot, she was hardly the only person with sufficient motivation to pull the trigger. What starts as a story of a culture’s institutionalized domestic abuse and one vibrant woman’s quest for economic and emotional independence against staggering odds, becomes a murder mystery tinged with political intrigue; what first appears self-evident becomes suspect as the complete tale unfolds. The songs of a band of troubadours punctuate the action with lyric commentary, as the film fluctuates between the glare of harsh realism and the moonlit mist of story book fantasy. In the end, this take on the eternal battle between the sexes culminates in a consummate expression of a mother’s love.

 -- Ann Yarabinee