The interlinked names of the lovers have an unusual power in Ramata-Toulaye Sy’s haunting, halting “Banel & Adama.” They play over and over as a whispery lullaby on the soundtrack. They cover the sheets of paper on which Banel (Khady Mane) compulsively writes, like a schoolgirl practicing cursive on the name of her crush. There’s an innocence to it at the beginning, as though Banel, whose strange mind we mostly occupy, is simply delighting in the sound and shape of their togetherness. But that’s when “Banel & Adama” is a love story, and before it descends, a little too hesitantly but with a subtly seductive power nonetheless, into drought and madness and maybe, cosmic retribution. The sun-and-superstition-soaked tale of an African girl contending with fate and folk tradition has some precedent in Rungano Nyoni’s excellent “I Am Not a Witch.” But here, as the bright imagery...
- 5/20/2023
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
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