Appreciation for Ekwa Msangi’s Farewell Amor
(Is this my favourite among all of the 2020 movies I’ve seen so far? Maybe.)
Intro
I've become the sort of guy who talks back at movies when I’m alone. When I feel for the characters, when I want them to make it, when I really really really want them to make it. Throughout Farewell Amor’s two-hour runtime, I often gesticulated wildly at my screen; I so badly wanted its three lead characters to make it. Despite all their flaws, despite how they occasionally hurt each other, or maybe precisely because of those reasons, I just wanted them to make it.
Synopsis
As a consequence of a bloody civil war in their native Angola, a young married couple, Walter (portrayed by Ntare Mwine with remarkable grace) and Esther (played with elegiac longing by Zainab Jah), is separated for 17 years. Walter emigrates to the US, working as a New York taxi driver, and Esther and their daughter Sylvia (played by Jayme Lawson, whose performance in many ways serves as the movie’s heartbeat) live as refugees in Dar es-Salaam in Tanzania. After Walter spends seventeen years sending money back to Esther and Sylvia and petitioning the Immigration Office to allow them into the country, the family is finally reunited at LaGuardia Airport, which is where the movie begins.
The Story Continues
Over the course of the movie, the family’s story unfolds from the perspective of each of its members, as they are plunged into the awkwardness of realising that they’re less a family and more three strangers struggling to live as a family in a cramped one-bedroom apartment. Walter is shown to struggle to balance his relief of reuniting with Esther and Sylvia with his longing for Linda, a woman with whom he’d forged a loving relationship in the years it seemed unlikely he’d ever see his family again. The trauma of losing her home and family is shown to have driven Esther to an extreme piety that’s shown to conceal fears and desires bubbling under the surface. Walter and Esther are shown to struggle not so much with falling in love again, but with the simple act of reacquainting themselves with each other after nearly two decades apart; a seventeen year period that has completely transformed them. Esther isn’t the fun-loving dance partner Walter fell in love with in Angola, and Walter, to Esther, seems distant, almost repulsed by her body. It’s a stark contrast to how glad she is to see him; she instinctively concludes there must’ve been someone else.
Their differences also play out subtly in each of their individual relationships with Sylvia. Esther is shown to be equal parts nurturing and smothering, equal parts loving and strict. While she’s shown to have been a pillar of strength for Sylvia in the first seventeen years of her life, she’s also shown to have endowed her with many of her anxieties. For instance, in her weaker moments, she forbids Sylvia to dance, something for which Sylvia is shown to have both an attraction and a talent. For Sylvia, this love for dance serves as a bond with her long-lost father, who’s shown to have, unlike Esther, maintained his love for dance, frequenting African dance clubs in New York, often with Linda in tow. He sees dance as an opportunity for self-expression in a country that allows African immigrants few other avenues for it, while Esther finds it to be at odds with her faith, which she sees as a connection to her lost homeland. Of its many charms, the movie’s transformation into a dance film is its most endearing. Through dance, its characters find expression, common ground, and acceptance.
In Conclusion
Farewell Amor maintains its gaze on the inner lives of its protagonists and avoids making any grand political statement. At no point does it offer criticism of the ever-changing immigration policies that allowed a family to be separated for seventeen years despite relentless petitioning. At no point does it take sides in the decades-long Angolan Civil War. All it aims to do is deal with the personal ramifications of these situations. Three people are shown attempting to make the most of their new lives together and find comfort in each other. In this endeavour, they’re helped by an endearing supporting cast: Joie Lee as Nzingha, a neighbour who makes friends with Esther, and Marcus Scribner as DJ, a schoolmate of Sylvia’s who encourages her to dance competitively. As each of these relationships evolve, our three protagonists are shown, to paraphrase Rihanna, love in a hopeless place. Despite the cynic in me protesting, I found myself wondering if the outpouring of joy and warmth the family found lacking at their reunion at the airport was not missing as I’d initially feared, but just delayed: to be found in small gestures as they grow increasingly accustomed to their lives together. One can hope.
Farewell Amor is streaming on MUBI.
