Alain Gomis’ Sprawling French-African Family Drama

The movies of writer-director Alain Gomis have often drifted between two separate continents and cultures. On the one side there’s France, where his mother comes from — and where Gomis grew up and studied film before making his first feature, the aptly titled immigrant drama L’Afrance. And on the other side there’s the Africa of his father, where the director has shot several movies over the past decade, including Félicité, the gritty story of a singer in the Democratic Republic of Congo that won Berlin’s Silver Bear award back in 2017.

Gomis returns to the Berlinale with Dao, a sprawling tale of two ceremonies, which — as if to prove the above point — takes place simultaneously between France and Guinea-Bissau, where some of the director’s relatives hail from. Gomis further blurs the lines between fact and fiction by including members of his own family among the cast, mixing them with amateur performers and a few seasoned French stars. The result is unlike any regular narrative feature, immersing the viewer in a collective experience that the actors seem to be living out in real time while we watch them.

Yet at just over three hours, and without a classic plotline, Dao can also be a patience-tester for those unwilling to groove to its improvised storytelling. Not exactly straightforward fiction and not really a documentary either, it sits in a unique place that offers viewers some moments of authenticity but grows monotonous as time goes by.

Set between a rowdy wedding in the French countryside and a death commemoration ritual in a tiny African village, the film focuses on an extended clan that’s united, and sometimes divided, by the two major events taking place over the course of the movie. Gomis, who’s credited along with five other editors, cuts from one ceremony to the other without warning, creating a vivid menagerie of sights, sounds, rites, languages, faces and places.

Both happenings are attended by the mother-daughter team of Béa (Katy Correa) and Nour (D’Johé Kouadio), who form the core of the cast and the closest thing to protagonists. They’re accompanied by Béa’s brothers (Mike Etienne, Nicolas Gomis, Fara Baco Gomis) and sister (Poundo Gomis), along with other people who weave in and out of the story at various points, making it hard to keep track of everyone at the same time.

But that seems to be Gomis’ intention. He’s less interested in plot and character than in creating a certain vibe. (It’s no surprise that the director’s previous film, Rewind & Play, was an archival documentary about jazz legend Thelonious Monk.) According to the press notes, there was never a real script for Dao, and it shows in certain scenes that ramble on without much shape. The drama does flare up at times between some of the real-fake siblings, but it’s never sustained for long.

The opening sequences feature Gomis in a Paris studio auditioning first-time actors Correa and Kouadio, along with a host of other potential cast members. He returns to these rehearsal scenes throughout the movie, breaking the fourth wall to underscore how Dao is less fiction and more like one long ensemble acting exercise constantly shifting between locations.

In Guinea-Bissau, Nour accompanies Béa for a ceremony honoring the latter’s father, who died two years prior. Béa hasn’t returned to Africa for a long time, while Nour has never seen the land of her mother, nor the village that her grandfather helped keep afloat by working as an immigrant in France. As other relatives arrive for the commemoration, Nour discovers a vital side of her family she’s never known, losing herself in dancing, eating, drinking, praying and other rituals over several long days and nights.

Back in France, Nour gets married to her boyfriend in a festive country wedding filled with many of the same family members seen back in Africa, not to mention scores of friends and a few veteran actors — including Samir Guesmir, who starred in Gomis’ feature Andalucia and plays Nour’s divorced dad. But it’s Béa who’s the main focus of the French scenes, watching with joy and anticipation as her daughter gets betrothed but feeling a certain underlying melancholy as she grows old surrounded by her loved ones.

There’s not much else in terms of plot, even if random conflicts appear during scenes that exist in a state of controlled chaos. Other more doc-style moments digress to explore the family’s history, which stretches all the way back to when Guinea-Bissau was a Portuguese colony and slavery abounded. The circular route that Nour takes, from France to the country of her ancestors, is contrasted with a traditional French wedding filled with the descendants of these very same slaves.

Gomis has a grand historical and multicultural vision here, pitting Nour and Béa within the greater flux of migration and assimilation that their family has experienced over time. One of many examples of this is a party scene at the wedding where everyone sings an a cappella version of The Fugees’ “Killing Me Softly” — an American rap song by Haitian immigrants, performed here by the French children and grandchildren of Africans born in the colonies.

But the film ultimately feels too stretched out for its own good, losing its way in a plethora of characters and details. Gomis is a generous director when it comes to his massive ensemble cast, from which there’s rarely a false note. He’s also too indulgent, refusing to make compromises that would probably help the bigger picture come into focus.

What emerges most from Dao is Gomis’ idea that the story of a film perhaps matters less than the collective act of making it with friends, colleagues and a variety of new talents. Whether they’re French or African, amateur or pro, mother or daughter, sister or brother, it’s just one big family by the time the movie ends.