I can bend my arms until they're backward but you can't bend your will to take in mine.

Sex, Okra And Salted Butter
Mahamat-Saleh Haroun 2008 Republic Of Chad/France
Starring: Marius Yelolo, Aïssa Maïga, Mata Gabin, Diouc Koma, Lorella Cravotta, Vincent N'Diaye

Two surprising things happened to me last night. The first was an unexpected bout of insomnia, a not unfamiliar but still maddening sensation that I'd trade for a punch in the teeth any day. The second happened as a result of combining the first with a simultaneously well-stocked and full-of-shit Skybox when, flicking through the listings, I came upon The Africa Channel and a film called Sex, Okra And Salted Butter. Now before I go any further let me say that Sex, Okra And Salted Butter is a terrible name for a film. French Kissing, Quinoa And Amontillado Sherry is also a terrible name for a film as is Lemongrass, Pickled Ginger And The Art Of The Wet-Hug but this film is called Sex, Okra And Salted Butter and it's not as I'd first thought a porn parody of Ready, Steady, Cook. It's in fact beautifully played, delicately realistic, tender, funny and overall very deceptive, for when morbid curiosity compelled me to read the accompanying write-up I discovered that it was the work of Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, the Chadian director whose actually quite soft-spoken 2010 slow-burner A Screaming Man I'd seen and liked very much. To my delight it then turned out that amongst the small cast was the wonderful Aïssa Maïga whose performances I've raved about on here before. Here she plays a woman on the run from her family whose path crosses with the household headed by Malik Diakhité, a recently cuckolded Malian patriarch now living in France. One can hardly blame his wife, Hortense, for her actions though - he's boorish, unwilling to go against tradition and spends his days in the bookies and his nights oppressing her, if I had him I'd cuckold him too. He does make an effort to repair things and in a gorgeous moment of pathos takes his kora on the bus and serenades her outside the hospital building she works in only to find out that he's under the wrong window and be silently removed from the premises by a burly security guard whose threat is drained into a mere pat on the shoulder. The scene in which she leaves him is also wordless and rendered almost everyday in Haroun's refusal to resort to melodrama - after all their relationship is in such a state that words can no longer mend it, nor can they adequately describe the heartbreak in her final longing look at her sleeping sons who, at least in the timescale of the film, she's never reunited with. Unspoken emotion is a big part of Haroun's modus operandi; in a poignant moment 12 year old Ali works out that his mother has left within 18 seconds and barely as many words appearing to have long accepted the fact as inevitable. Likewise when Malik thunders through the door of his eldest son Dani's home in search of his 'missing' wife the 22 year old immediately tells him that his mother isn't there before asking him to leave. Soon we find out why. Later another incident with a lonely, flirtatious neighbour only continues the themes. Maïga's entry into the film is unfortunately also where it falls down, the narrative becoming at best improbable and at worst lukewarm and sentimental for the sake of it. She, like the rest of the cast, is excellent but you get the impression she's fighting against a script that, for the final third, should be in a much lesser film. Haroun's humanity in the way he manages to make the ending genuinely uplifting and credibly redemptive is admirable but the actors have to share the praise, particularly leading man Marius Yelolo, who is in practically every scene and develops his character with nuances that you get the impression are solely his own, and 6 year old debutant Vincent N'Diaye, who steals most of the scenes he's in with deadpan timing to rival many elders.