Bazzoli/Lelong:Amour,Sexe & Mobylette
What a charming film, full of Life and Love! Taking place in a small town in Burkina Faso, it is built as a film for cinema release with several parallel stories circling around the St. Valentine´s Day. Old people´s love, young people´s love, a young man who suffers because she is far away – and a lot of opinions on love and sex, on polygamy, and on aids and circumcision.
These opinions are conveyed through local radio journalists and a photographer, who walks the town to ask questions about love and sex on behalf of the filmmakers. Who also follow heated discussions among the young ones or let childen present their love drawings in a school class.
If they are playing themselves or have been given a role in the film, or both – is not important as the whole tone of the film has an authentic feel of honest lightness and the characters come out to be open-hearted and minded. There is a respect for the subject and for the characters, that is very much represented in the old man, Jean-Marie, the fisherman, who opens the film and sets the action. Charisma and dignity. Not to forget to mention the music composed by the local master Yoni.
France/Germany, 2008, 92 mins.
