Year: 1998
Country:
France
Run Time:
80 minutes
The year 1999 sees the opening of the most expensive home production in the history of French cinema - a live-action version of the cartoon character Asterix the Gaul. Sound sadly familiar? Perhaps it will take daringly low-budget indie flicks like THE ELEVENTH COMMANDMENT to steer France awa from faux Hollywood bloat and back to the vibrant New Wave spring of Truffaut and Godard, whose breakthrough "Breathless" this film most stylistically resembles. Nervous camerawork, a defiantly roving narrative, and naturalistic performances hallmark Mama Ke?ta's punchy tale of three outlaws on their way to a reckoning. Mouss, desperately ill and realizing he has little time, locks his wife in a bathroom and sets out to right a wrong he committed 20 years ago. His ex-partner Thomas, finally released from prison, finds himself being shadowed by the third protagonist, an earnest youth named Thomas, whose guileless exterior conceals a motive as serious and deadly as a pistol in a pocket. Like a mirror shattering in reverse, the jagged pieces of narrative come together in the climax to reflect the whole. (In French with English subtitles)
Screenplay
Mama Ke?ta
Director
Mama Keita
Producer
Robert Dray
Cinematography
Paco Wiser
Editing
Val?rie Bregaint
Principal Cast
Patrick Catalifo, Xavier Thiam, Wasis Diop, Camille Japy
Phoenix Productions
27 rue Emile Reynaud
93100 Montreuil
FRANCE
tel: (33-1) 4587 5977
fax: (33-1) 4870 1747
Donate
Your donation helps fulfill our mission to promote artistically and culturally significant film arts through education and exhibition.