NHA FALA
Cape Verde/Portugal, 2002, 90 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Flora Gomes.
Nha Fala is an exuberant African musical set in Cabo Verde and in Paris. The focus is on a contemporary African city, the politics and corruption, especially as regards trade.
However, the film focuses on a young heroine who gets the opportunity to study overseas in Paris. In Paris, she thrives. She enjoys the experience of study, her relationship with a young man whose parents own a restaurant and who supports her in a singing career. However, her African traditions tell her that if she sings, she will die. This is a belief reinforced by injunctions from her grandmother and her mother. However, she decides to go ahead and make a recording.
Very successful, she goes back with her husband to Africa. Her family is scandalised by what she has done - but the solution is a comic one, a mock-funeral in which she will be declared dead, although she will be fully alive and able to pursue her career.
The film is an entertaining if slight exploration of the encounter between African cultural traditions and contemporary Western customs and beliefs. By making the film a musical, the director has drawn in the audience to experience the dilemmas of the young woman rather than simply observe them.
1. A Portuguese/French production with Cape Verde? Cape Verde locations, the city, the coast, the harbour? The contrast with Paris and its apartments, garrets, the cityscapes?
2. The film as a musical, the background musical score, songs, performance, choreography, exuberance?
3. Life in the city: the rich deputy mayor, his wheeler-dealing about crops, his pursuit of Vita, her rejection of him, the men in the truck following, the other wheeler-dealers, his giving up the deals, the irony of his final change of heart, his being married, working in the school?
4. Vita going to Paris, her discussions with her mother and grandmother? Studies, success in accountancy? The collage of people singing about her? Her change of style, her glamour? Pierre? The recording studio? The injunction that she was never to sing and, if she did, she would die? The swan imagery? Explaining to Pierre, going to his family's restaurant? Their acceptance of her? In the night and her decision to sing? Going to the recording studio, getting the band, the success of the disc? Her decision to return to Africa, Pierre's agreement? Back in Africa, telling her mother, her mother's horror, saying that she was dead? The plan to create her own funeral, buying all the coffins, the advertisements in the media, the celebration, the stairs, the people queuing to see her, the gifts of flowers? Her mother receiving them? The band arriving, the singing, her mother joining in, the happy celebration?
5. The people in Cape Verde, the young men and their ambitions, political corruption? Wheeler-dealing? The rehearsal for the musical, people seeing him in church, the various candidates to lead the choir in their songs? The sternness of the priest? The mad leader, his following the men and carrying the statue? The national hero (to whom the film was dedicated?) The statue being carried around for years and now its finally landing magically on its resting place? The people at the funeral, the cross-section, the priest again, everybody joining in the singing and the theme of risking?
6. The songs in the house, the people who had met Vita, the old man who was against blacks (but when he was in Africa, he liked the music)? The glorification of Vita? Her singing and the beauty of the song in the recording studio?
7. An African film, colour and life, the vitality of West Africa, the interest in Paris, the discussions about colonial powers, the breaking down of the 20th century prejudices, north and south, rich and poor, black and white? A film of unity and celebration?
