Mandabi

Directed by Ousmane Sembène

Running time: 1hr32 | REVIEWED BY GUY LODGE

Makhouredia Gueye (left) stars in Mandabi

In the opening scene of Mandabi, a Dakar street barber plies his trade with somewhat ruthless efficiency, scraping scalps bare with a straight razor, leaving them baby-soft and gleaming, before an invasive finishing touch. Not only does he pick the client's nose clean with a firm forefinger, but he swivels the razor around the nostrils for good measure. It's the kind of incidental but cheerfully visceral everyday detail that Senegalese master Ousmane Sembène relishes in his long-buried, brilliantly restored 1968 film — wittily foreshadowing a story in which our hero will be scarcely be able to move for grasping hands up in his business.

Sembène specialised in narratives of folky, fable-like simplicity overlaid with wicked, politically inflamed satire, and Mandabi is a quintessential example. Middle-aged patriarch Ibrahima (Makhouredia Gueye) has two wives, seven children and no money — until his Paris-based nephew wires him a money order for 25,000 francs, mostly to be saved for the nephew's return, but with a vital few grand for Ibrahima himself. It's a good deed that yields trouble in cascading waves. Ibrahima can't collect the money without an ID card, cuing a Kafka-esque bureaucratic maze while unwelcome word of his windfall spreads among craven acquaintances.

Capitalism is the overriding enemy, but Sembène isn't pious in his opposition: Mandabi swaggers with a keen awareness of street-level economy and survival, hard on the game and wryly empathetic toward the players. The filmmaking blends brisk modernism and traditional form: just 92 minutes long, it feels cut to the bone, shorn of conventional storytelling niceties, but at no cost to its piercing observational eye. The camera moves are functional but laser-focused, and even the production design is a mixture of westernised midcentury kitsch, swirling Senegalese prints and sun-dried streetscapes — suggestions of Ibrahima's financial past, present and elusive future sit side by side in every frame.

Few African filmmakers have ever caught the continent's ongoing sense of transitional unrest with as much caustic affection as Sembène on peak form, and it's cause for celebration that this tragic, hilarious, wise, impolite film has been rescued so iridescently from archival obscurity.

MANDABI (1968) Written by Ousmane Sembène | Shot by Paul Soulignac | Edited by Gilbert Kikoïne, Max Saldinger

In selected cinemas now, and available on Blu-ray from 28 June