Dear Diary,
A co-worker recommended this movie.
Movie Review
By Phil Villarreal
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
"Purification," practiced in dozens of African countries, is known in the West as female circumcision or genital mutilation, and is a barbaric practice meant to take away sexual pleasure. Cutters remove the clitoris without sterilization or anesthetic.
"Moolaadé," a riveting drama from the father of African film, 82-year-old Ousmane Sembene, is a staunch feminist fable in which a woman valiantly stands up against the purification, exposing it for the misogynistic fraud it is.
The story unfolds in a village in the West African farming country of Burkina Faso, one of the world's poorest. For better or for worse, the tentacles of globalization are embracing the people. Modern technologies such as radios and engines can exist alongside huts, but newfangled ideas will not rest with coarse tradition.
Colle (Fatoumata Coulibaly), the second wife of one of the village leaders, has sheltered her daughter from the purification in the past and gives asylum to four girls who fear undergoing the knife. Everyone in the village knows someone who has died from the mutilation.
Cleverly fighting convention with convention, Colle invokes "moolaadé," a protection in which she strings a piece of string at her doorstep, and it is understood that a vengeful spirit will attack anyone who crosses the line.
The elders proclaim that purification should continue because it is a Muslim tradition - never mind that one of the women heard on the radio that the Imam has said the practice is not required. The mutilation must continue because it has been done before.
Women who were spared the procedure are known as "balokoro," and the false whispers surround them, that they stink or cannot bear children, are only machinations in the disinformation campaign to keep purification going. The term is tossed around by village elders, in a continuous effort to cast a positive light on the ritual, but Colle prefers the more accurate "cut."
A certain sadism courses through the women in charge of conducting the "purification," and some village mothers seem unwilling to protect their daughters simply because they had to face the ordeal in their day, and forcing their daughters to do the same is some sort of displaced revenge.
The head man's son is Ibrahima, a wealthy businessman who lives in France and has returned to the village to pay off family debt and claim a wife.
Tradition dictates that he must not take a non-purified mate, but experience in the outside world has colored his views on the practice, and he must decide whether to stand against tradition. His prospective bride-to-be is Colle's daughter, Amsatou (Salimata Traoré), who is uncut.
Ousmane's film spurns Western conventions for a distinctly shamanistic style, peppering his grim tale with moments of joyful humor and delicious flavor. Some comic relief is provided by Mercenaire (Dominique Zeïda), who shamelessly hits on every woman he sees and sells overpriced batteries to clueless customers.
The villainess is the morbid Doyenne des Exciseuses (Mah Compaoré), whose career is based on the ceremony. She actively campaigns to break the moolaadé, and is followed by expressionless assistants dressed in red, shock troops in the grim practice.
The outside world is blamed for Colle's stand, providing a symbolism-drenched scene in which the radios are rounded up and tossed into a bonfire, where some of the radios still play as they burn.
The dramatic pulse focuses on Colle, and whether she'll give in and rescind the moolaadé, and the true colors villagers must show as they reason things out and begin to take sides and definitive, risk-all stands. Like the radios, Colle's voice will spread and liberate as it is engulfed by the flames of blind conformity.
http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/ent_movies/59495.php
