Review: ‘Atlantics’ Captures the Concept of Soulmates
Claiming the Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Atlantics conceives a narrative that is both a love story and a ghost story. The film centers on Ada (Mame Bineta Sane), a teenage girl and her lover Souleiman (Ibrahima Traoré). Caught in the throes of love, their romance is introduced as fleeting as they steal kisses in a construction site under the knowledge of Ada’s arranged marriage. Just as quickly as their love is introduced, it is stricken as Souleiman vanishes into the night with all the other young men in the town. Together they take a boat to Europe in the hopes of finding work and a livable income after being denied payment for their labor on a towering skyscraper that looms over the city.
Ada is left wondering how her lover could leave without so much as a parting word, But hope of his return remains. When her arranged marriage is disrupted by her wedding bed spontaneously bursting into flame, Souleiman is suspected of having committed the crime. Soon after, an inexplicable fever begins to overtake the local young women, and an obsession with finding Souleiman builds for the investigator tasked with the case. As the story progresses, Ada’s desire to reconnect with her soulmate manifests mysteriously. The love between her and Soulemain takes on a greater power, a connection between them beyond the physical and emotional that transcends into the realm of the supernatural.
To create an effective haunting, director Mati Diop develops a distinct sense of space. She layers meaning into her backdrops, returning over and over to shots of roiling waves, likened to her character’s unfulfilled yearning and unknowable futures. The ocean horizon is rich with potential, yet volatile and treacherous. It offers no answers or insight into what has become of Souleiman or the others, an impenetrable barrier of the mind’s imagination.
The ocean is not the only restless thing in Senegal, as laborers go unpaid for months by the developers of the city, and the class divide deepens. The film resists globalization on behalf of those who are simultaneously burdened with constructing it and subdued by it. When the boys depart, the girls are left to carry out retribution, tragically too late as it is. The gender divide is explored through various concepts of control. As carried out by a traditional patriarchy, it can be seen as a way to police the girls’ bodies. Yet a more literal possession through the fever grants them with some power to affect justice.
Diop’s less- is- more directorial style cooperates well with her mesmerizing visuals. The women who inhabit the city seem undead, and the city itself feels as though it has been turned into a ghost town before construction has even finished. Fatima Al Qadiri’s score contributes effectively to the haunting atmosphere. In balancing romanticism and realism, the feeling of this love story lingers long after the credits roll.
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