Senegal: The Pirogue (2012)
Senegal’s The Pirogue (2012) was billed as a drama, so I was rather unprepared for what turned out to be a harrowing survival movie.
The plot itself could be from any current newspaper headline: a group of illegal immigrants attempt a secretive sea crossing (in this instance from Senegal to Spain, with the ultimate aim for most of getting to France – because Senegal was once colonised by the French, so they at least have a language in common).
We see no police, no coastguards, no border patrols – that’s not the point of this. This is a film about the people and the crossing. The first act sets up life in Senegal (it’s a poor country, with little in the way of opportunity – although from the point of view of an outsider it also doesn’t look that bad. But then, none of the characters want to leave forever – some of them are just going in order to get some better paid work, then come home – so their reasoning makes sense. Others are going to join family) as we meet the man who is persuaded to captain the pirogue – an open fishing boat which is not remotely suited to an ocean crossing.
Soon we’re on board, as we meet the cast; the disabled man going abroad in order to get a decent prosthetic leg; the musician who already has work lined up in Paris; the young man convinced he’ll be spotted by football scouts. There’s a stowaway (a woman), some men from Guinea, and a chicken. It’s all very, very generic – but that’s the point. These are supposed to be relatable characters who we understand. They are – the film succeeds. It’s not intended to break new ground; it’s cinematic shorthand which relies on the actors to flesh out the characters and make them seem real (which they uniformly do).
After a second act which allows us to get to know these people and spend time with them, the story really begins with the third act. We’ve already had a taste of what can go wrong (they see another pirogue which has lost an engine – it quickly becomes obvious that every person on that boat is going to die, and our people can do nothing about it), so when the storm hits, it’s not a surprise. It’s quite a grim storm, though (three people are killed, two by being struck, one by falling overboard) and that’s when the film starts to get really grim. They’ve lost the engine and their GPS and then all hope. What had been simply a watchable drama soon becomes a disturbing look at fate and fatality (the closing text reveals that in the ten years before more than 30,000 had attempted a crossing like this. More than 5,000 of those people died).
The film offers no solutions, no answers, no explanations. That’s not what this is about – this is simply a depiction of why people want to make such an attempt and what can happen to them. The rest is left to the viewer.
Ironically, this could be reclassified as a horror film. (It’s not, but that doesn’t make the tension any easier.) And despite the fact I’m not Senegalese and I get seasick just looking at a ferry, this was extremely relatable. Sooner or later I’m going to watch a film I don’t enjoy, I’m sure of it.
Disc: DVD (Region 1, USA)
Source: eBay
Availability: Available; support a small label and buy direct!