Atlantics: The Most Overrated Foreign Film of 2019
After 55 minutes of boredom, Mati Diop’s Atlantics morphs into something else, it takes one of the biggest and most unexpected turns in any movie that I’ve seen in 2019, but still sucks. Our protagonist, Ada (Mame Bineta Sane), is in love with Souleiman (Ibrahima Traore), but Souleiman mysteriously disappears after he and his co-workers take a boat to Spain. Little does Ada know that Souleiman and their co-workers become spirits and possess the bodies of the girls and a police inspector (Amadou Mbow) who falls gravely ill.
There is no denying that Atlantics might be the most overrated foreign film that came out in 2019, beyond Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite. Everything about it is dull and inherently clichéd, from its self-centered protagonists to its non-existent story. Ada is incredibly self-centered and unlikeable, she is forced into a marriage she doesn’t want and loves a character that doesn’t really love her, as he decides to leave instead of stay with her. The police inspector is another unlikeable brat, who does everything in his own self-interests and tries to pin a crime on Souleiman and believes Ada is helping Souleiman, even though Souleiman is dead. It’s all very clichéd and incredibly pedantic — even if the film is well-acted and beautifully shot. I think the best aspect of the movie is its cinematography; visually encapsulating the working-class Dakar. The best performance of the entire movie comes with Amadou Mbow’s detective Issa, who tries to frame an arson on Souleiman, because someone saw him, even though no one saw him. He’s a determined detective who can’t help to have a fix on Souleiman and Ada, even if he knows nothing of the two.
Where Atlantics goes into fucked-up territory is when the girls become possessed by the boys’ spirit and demand money from their former boss, N’Diaye (Diankou Sembene). These are the only scenes that I thoroughly enjoyed, due to the fact that they were incredibly unexpected and weren’t anything I’d ever seen before. You think that the movie is just a cookie-cutter forbidden love romance, until it morphs into a spiritual tale, “A Ghost Story” if you will. Those scenes are incredibly compelling, using the visual medium of white eyes to portray the possession of Issa and the girls into spirits. It’s a shame that I wasn’t engaged in any of Mati Diop’s film — it’s an incredibly self-centered film, with self-centered characters only caring about themselves. I watched it, liked Karsten Runquist’s review which just said “This shit Boring”, and totally agreed. I have nothing else to say. This shit Boring — yes, it has great performances & wonderful cinematography plus a couple of great moments here & there (the ghost parts), but HOLY HELL is this movie one of the most boring and unengaging films I’ve seen in recent years. Skip it. Skip it with fire. Parasite was overrated, but I did end up enjoying it. This is just dull and lifeless — with dull and lifeless characters doing dull and lifeless things. Not a movie to see. A movie to SKIP!
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