DAN WEBSTER:
When her first film, I Am Not a Witch premiered in 2018, the Zambian-Welsh filmmaker Rungaro Nyoni received numerous critical accolades.
Los Angeles Times critic Kenneth Turan, for one, called the film a “smart and savage satire (that) is impressive for the way it joins a dramatically involving story with a Swiftian tale of human society in general and Africa culture and customs in particular.”
Minus any mention of Swift, much the same can be said of Nyoni’s new film, the intriguingly titled On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, which is available for streaming on a number of services (I watched it courtesy of Amazon Prime).
First, let’s deal with that title. A guinea fowl is a family of bird species native to Africa. Found both in the wild and raised domestically, guinea fowls are known as natural watchdogs. When they detect a predator, or indeed any kind of threat, they make what are said to be “loud, harsh cackling alarm calls.”
And how does that fit into Nyoni’s film? Well, let’s begin with Shula (played by the British-Zambian actress/model Susan Chardy). It is she whom we see driving alone at night on a Zambian back road, wearing a costume of dark glasses and a puffy body suit (seems she is returning home from a dinner party).
She stops when she sees a body lying prone in the opposite lane. And almost immediately, she recognizes the person as her uncle Fred. But instead of getting out to see if she can help him, or in fact showing any sign of emotion, she merely calls her father—who tells her to lock her car doors, not to get out and that he is on his way. That is, he will be if she will send him money for cab fare—which she promises to do.
The person who eventually comes along, though, isn’t Shula’s father. Instead, it’s her cousin Nsansa (played by Elizabeth Chisela) who, clearly drunk, is ignored by Shula, at least at first. But after Nsansa calls the police and is told that no one can come until the morning, Shula eventually lets her in the car—and the two cousins sleep until daybreak when the police do show up.
And that is when the writer-director Nyoni’s drama really begins. For soon Shula get embroiled in family relations. After a collection of her “aunties” interrupt her participation in an online business meeting, she finds herself bullied into helping with the funeral arrangements.
Those tasks involve not only preparing food but then serving the many men who show up, men who obviously are considered to be higher on the social plane. In one telling scene, Shula—concerned about her young cousin Bupe (played by Esther Singini)—finds herself taking food orders from various “uncles” who clearly aren’t accustomed to feeding themselves.
In the midst of this, it becomes clear to Shula that uncle Fred was not the honorable man that everyone is making him out to be. Not only does Nsansa reveal that Fred once sexually abused her, young Bupe proclaims in a video that he did the same to her—and, in fact, Shula herself ultimately admits that she suffered from Fred’s predatory nature as well.
None of this, though, makes a difference to the larger family. In fact, even though Fred’s widow lives in house populated by several children—all of whom presumably were sired by Fred—she is forced to face what amounts to a family tribunal. And during it, she is accused of being a bad wife and, ultimately, is forced to give up everything.
Family honor, it seems, is all-important, even—and maybe especially—when it involves a dishonorable man, a description that we can safely assume applies also to Shula’s own father who, when Shula confronts him, declines to demonize Fred. Nyoni portrays all of this matter-of-factly, and in the face of it Shula’s initial, fiercely self-protective manner gradually softens. Then it hardens in another manner altogether.
As the family squabbles, Shula—surrounded by several of Fred’s children—stands outside, her face taut with anger, her voice quivering as she does her best to imitate the cry of a guinea fowl. And her meaning is clear: Watch out everyone, there are predators among us.
For Spokane Public Radio, I’m Dan Webster.
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Movies 101 host Dan Webster is the senior film critic for Spokane Public Radio and a blogger for Spokesman.com.