Awa and Adama (Adam and Eve) are very close twins. In order to help her scholastically less able brother, Awa (Nacky Sy Savané) sells her soul to the soothsayer Mousso (Gérard Essomba), without realizing that she will have to face all the humiliations an African woman can bear as a result. Unanimously decried by the critics, La Jumelle was warmly received by the general public in Ouagadougou. Unsurprisingly so: it is a photo story not a film. The academicism of the framing and lighting rival the fixedness of the image. The actors (who are not at fault) insistently recite and act out a extremely theatrical script which lays the sentiment on thick, multiplying the themes ad infinitum: forced marriage, jealousy, excision, divination, possession, infanticide… The illustrative music is simply laid over the static images; the shots are poorly linked, the ellipses whimsical, the dialogues pompous, the zooms pervasive, and the didacticism pedantic.
///Article N° : 5387
