From Poverty to Africa: Retrospection Part 8 - Conclusion

From Poverty to Africa should be a film about the journey that leads a poor man from Marseille to want to tackle poverty in Africa. This is what the beginning sets it up to be. But it isn't. It's a film about a French couple on their honeymoon in the UK becoming embroiled in a plot by a megalomaniac to summon a giant hypermarket in accordance with an instruction manual of extraterrestrial origin. As a result of the clash between the film's ostensible goal and its actual content, the film's plot ends up making little sense to the unprepared viewer and merely adds on layer after layer of inscrutable complexity as it ambles towards its lethargic expiry in a twenty-minute expository lecture. The question that Gaitán asks at the start, the question of how their project got started, is only really answered right at the end, where the film suddenly decides to hurl a political message at us. Like the hypothetical audience, the main character of Thomas is not prepared to hear this message since there has been no build-up to it throughout the story; yet he takes it, runs with it and philosophises over it in a way that a man who grew up in the slums would almost certainly never do.

There is nothing wrong with the message itself. The problem lies in the film's history. The film was never intended to have a message, nor was it anything to do with aliens or Africa, and so all of these elements sit uneasily with the more comic honeymoon section precisely because the links between them are so contrived. The film suffers from dissociative identity disorder. The main characters, meanwhile, suffer from identity deficiency disorder, since they have no consistent personality.

On the whole, the actors - most of whom had little or no previous acting experience - coped tremendously well with the almost crushing burden of the plot's complexity, but hesitant and monotonous delivery in a number of places combined with less-than-desirable sound quality situate the film undeniably at the below-average end of amateur.

With a supporting cast that's far more interesting than they are, the protagonists bumble their way through one of the most convoluted narrative structures ever devised. Understanding the plot requires the viewer's fullest attention, but the film offers little incentive to make this effort: its unimaginative shots, irregular pacing, tedious expositions and a general lack of movement of any kind go hand in hand to create a dull experience for the hypothetical audience. As part of its mission of continual self-reference and self-deprecation, the film even seeks to remind the viewer just how boring the plot is by showing Gaitán, the very personification of the audience, getting bored and falling asleep at various points. Gaitán hence confirms for us the protagonists' obvious lack of story-telling finesse, which reflects back on the film itself. This, combined with the protagonists' stupidity in failing to recognise that their stalker is actually a single person and the fact that they seem to show no interest in the mystery that surrounds them and are motivated entirely by their efforts to evade the ever-present but entirely invisible 'media', coupled with their inconstant and uninteresting personalities and their sudden whims, makes it very difficult for us to sympathise with them at all. Character development? This film doesn't have time for character development - there's too much plot to explain. At length.

By professional standards the film obviously fails; but it fails even by amateur standards as well. It fails at the first hurdle in its insistence on spending lots of money and effort on unimportant details and not enough on the essential equipment (you're making a film - you might want a decent camera?). Problem after problem befell this project, and time and again we came up with a fix. We were forever on a quest for the one thing that would Save The Film, the magic ingredient that would set things right. Our repeated 'fixes' were often inspired and creative, but they went so far that we ended up trying to turn the film into something it wasn't, and finished with something so convoluted that it just doesn't know what it is.

If this were a short film produced on a shoestring budget then undeveloped characters and a plot that makes no sense wouldn't really matter, so long as it were entertaining - so long as it did something and did it well, such as make the audience laugh. But you expect more from a feature length film; you expect better from a film that has a message and a coherent and thoroughly formulated plot. So although there is a part of me that's thinking "Chill out, Justin, it's just a bizarre amateur comedy - it isn't supposed to be a literary masterpiece, it's just a bit of fun!", another part of me knows that it wasn't supposed to be "just a bit of fun"; it clearly intends to be a good, cohesive film with a message.

Though I've enjoyed slating this project as the most contemptible trash ever committed to an out-dated format, there are good things to say about it. There are some funny lines, even eminently quotable ones. There are some entertaining scenes. There's some good acting. There are some good ideas. There's some good music. There are some good sound effects. There are some good visual effects. Despite the inconstancy that I refer to, there are many elements of the film that do manage to tie it together; the use of meta-fiction and 'meta-diegesis' gives the film some originality; and I don't think anyone can deny that the production has a distinctively colourful and quirky personality, a wacky kind of logic all of its own. The film is not so bad that it doesn't deserve to be seen. Think. A camel ornament that prevents a married couple from getting intimate on their honeymoon. An ex-security guard obsessed with yams who always speaks in rhyme. A stalker who puts on a profusion of different hats, beards and moustaches. Passengers on a ferry flailing about in panic with a box over their heads. And "look at Thomas go!"

Making a feature film isn't easy, so the fact that the project is finished at all is a success in itself. So much work had to be done; so many things had to come together; so much organisation went into it. From the start of production, it took just over a year. This is actually pretty good going. For all its flaws, the final product is watchable and amusing. Bits of it are dull; bits of it are even inexcusably awful. But bits of it are also inspired, creative, hilarious. The overall effect is that of a family-friendly film (so long as your children have the vocabulary of an EU bureaucrat who graduated from the Sorbonne) that makes a charming attempt at an ambitious goal.

Rating: -2.5 out of -5. I say point five because one of the points is reportedly rather shoddy.