Drawing the second night of WOW to a close, Wùlu is easily the most conventional film of the festival so far. Hailing from West Africa, it is a piece of genre filmmaking with Western sensibilities that, whilst put together with style and confidence, doesn’t quite work as a political statement.
Ibrahim Koma puts in a terrific performance as Ladji, a former conductor, newly unemployed, who falls back into the criminal underworld he has tried to leave behind. What starts as drug trafficking on a small scale, however, quickly escalates to Ladji trying to build his own empire to sustain an expensive lifestyle for he and his sister.
Many have compared Daouda Coulibaly’s film to the likes of Brian De Palma’s Scarface, which makes perfect sense when you consider the director’s filmmaking tutorage took place in America. In actuality though, if you’ve ever seen any crime drama about drugs in your life, then you’ve seen Wùlu before.
Whilst the film intentionally wears its influences on its sleeve, it means that it ends up being filled with every possible cliché of the genre that you can think of. It is jam-packed with double crosses, guns, flashy cars, swimming pools, big houses and glamourous women in various stages of undress as Ladji climbs his way up the criminality ladder.
Clearly, attempts are being made at giving the story more depth, teased out in the relationship between Ladji and his sister, Aminata, and one of his friends turned partners. Interestingly, it’s the relationship between the two friends which comes the closest to drawing some kind of emotion from the story, but this is sadly short-lived.
Ending on a serious note about how drug trafficking can finance terrorism, one can’t help but feel that the message of Wùlu has become lost somewhere down the line. For me, it’s a film that is largely all surface, that projects this image of the criminal lifestyle through an incredibly colourful aesthetic. And whilst there’s no arguing that the surface is done well, it lacks the emotional impact or political intrigue that could have made this something special and unique.
WOW Film Festival opens at Chapter cinema in Cardiff on Friday 17 March before heading to Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Small World Theatre Cardigan, Taliesin Arts Centre in Swansea, and Theatr Clwyd in Mold. See www.wowfilmfestival.com for full details.
words JOE RICHARDS