Director: Alain Gomis
Year Released: 2017
Rating: 3.0
Félicité (Véronique Tshanda Beya Mputu), a singer in Kinshasa, has to go around town begging for money to pay for an operation for her teenage son, who was injured in a motorcycle accident (his left leg is bad), but even after humiliating herself and being rejected by many (including the father of her child) she still can't gather all the funds in time. Gomis had to have been inspired by the Dardennes to make this, since it's so smooth and lived-in - his hand-held camera accompanies its lead through personal struggle and hardship, while capturing the franticness of city life (like the Dardennes, he shows sympathy for the working class). It slips up a little in the last act, when Félicité undergoes a breakdown - there's a little too much 'staring off into space' (to simulate 'deep feelings') - and it loses a lot of forward momentum in favor of 'visual poetry' (ahem), but the inherent kindness of Tabu (Papi Mpaka), the world's worst refrigerator repairman, puts it back on the human track.
