Atlantics

Atlantics

When you watch a lot of movies in a week, month, or year, it’s rare to find one that does all three: keeps your pulse racing from start to finish, matches its stunning visuals with an equally compelling story and defies easy categorization. Mati Diop’s haunting debut feature “Atlantics” is that kind of film. It’s like few others you’ll see this year or decade.

Set in Dakar, the bustling capital of Senegal, a young man fed up with his boss cheating him and his friends out of their paychecks takes off for Spain in search of better work and a better life. He leaves behind his love, Ada (Mame Bineta Sane), without so much as a goodbye. Wrestling with her feelings for him and his abrupt departure while days away from her promised marriage to wealthy Omar (Babacar Sylla), Ada keeps her heart where Souleiman (Ibrahima Traoré) ought to be as strange things begin happening around town. Unexplained things.

So on the surface this is another one of those stories about lovers being kept apart by forces beyond their control but “Atlantics” quickly reveals itself to be something more than that. Co-written with Olivier Demangel, Diop’s script blends the tale with the desperation that compels people to leave home and loved ones behind; echoes of the refugee crisis; a look at how the rich exploit the poor and fetishize virginity, purity and marriage. The mystery slowly unfolds during “Atlantics,” which sprinkles gentle surprises throughout its otherwise smooth storytelling.

The story starts on Souleiman but then it belongs to Ada. During Ada’s wedding party she overhears two sets of friends the outgoing modern dressing party girls vs. the more conservative religious flock pass judgment on her unhappiness over Souleiman not being there. And when Ada and Omar’s wedding bed goes up in flames, it’s hard not to suspect that one group of friends set it on fire as a way to provoke trouble for Souleiman and implicate Ada in a scandal.

Newcomer Mame Bineta Sane is absolutely electric as Ada. She starts the film with almost a girlish crush on Souleiman, but over the course of the movie we see her love for him and herself grow. There are shots where she just looks devastated, quiet, as her friends talk over her and tell her to move on from Souleiman and enjoy life with Omar.

Eventually, she gets petulant with her mother and stands up for herself when Omar tries to force her to come with him. She’s no longer being pushed around by an uncaring husband or conservative parents who make her get a doctor’s note proving she was a virgin before marrying or meddling friends. Sane’s vibrant approach to the character takes us along on Ada’s emotional journey of finding out what happened to her love as much as it does finding out who she will become as an adult.

Claire Mathon, the cinematographer with such French credits as this year’s highly anticipated “Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” captures Dakar in its many moods.

Sometimes she captures the windswept coastal setting at different times of day, like this blindingly bright afternoon when there’s so much sun it hurts to look outside, or at sunset when the sky looks like a multicolor tapestry of gold, red and purple, or in the dead of night, when you can only see the white-tipped foam riding on dark waves.

It’s important to depict not just the sea that gives the movie its name but also Dakar itself which sits on a peninsula where crashing waves are almost inescapable. Even inside Ada’s curtains blow in the wind like waves. In one scene, it’s a stormy enough night to double as a bad omen for what she will later learn.

The seaside club where Ada and her friends used to flirt with guys before they left for Spain is another marvel Mathon orchestrates; here, saturated dark lights and lasers create different waves of color that wash over them women who seem to be floating in both a dream and a nightmare once they must accept that their boyfriends and brothers have left. Diop and Mathon also put mirrors into motion throughout “Atlantics” in ways that feel otherworldly while remaining instrumental in character development.

Part of what makes “Atlantics” so haunting is musician Fatima Al Qadiri’s melodious score; it’s an other wordly mix of electronic sounds that remain mysterious and emotional throughout. During Ada’s most stressful moment (getting married to Omar), the score creeps into a higher register; it makes an unnerving sound even before we see anything visually upsetting happen on-screen.

And I’m reminded somewhat of Peter Weir’s “Picnic at Hanging Rock”; “Atlantics” has a similarly magical yet disturbing score not to mention its foreboding depiction of nature through which these characters’ lives will never be the same again because something went unexplained right before their eyes and everything unfolds slowly throughout the course of one movie.

Still, “Atlantics” is its own surprising film, one I hope will be talked about with as much reverence as something like “Picnic at Hanging Rock.” It’s a potent mix of feelings, meanings, gorgeous visuals and hypnotic sounds.

Diop’s story could not be more timely yet timeless and it is so wonderfully told through Mathon’s lens and accompanied by Al Qadiri’s score that it is easy to soak in the story’s emotions, the movie’s evocative cinematography, the naturalistic performances from this cast of non-actors and the emotional sounds of the city coming alive with music. By the time I am awash in blue-green credits after this movie has ended, I already want to dive back in and start “Atlantics” over again.

Watch Atlantics For Free On Gomovies.