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GriGris Movie Review

GriGris is a 2013 Chadian drama film directed by Mahamat Saleh Haroun and starring Soulemane Deme. It is far from this director’s best work.

Despite having a paralyzed leg, the titular protagonist dreams of becoming a dancer. However, his aspirations suffer a jolt when his stepfather falls ill and he is forced to work for petrol traffickers. From then on, a rather straightforward crime narrative develops and I did not particularly care for this story personally.

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Chadian director Mahamat Saleh Haroun was responsible for the recent ‘Lingui’, which was a much better and much more potent film than this one. It dealt with misogyny in Africa and how brave women must be to go through their lives in those societies. There is nothing as thematically important or as sophisticated in this movie, which is too thin and forgettable overall.

We have seen so many times before this tale of somebody who has a problem preventing them from reaching their full potential in a chosen position, but they still brave through it regardless. Thus, this storyline is not as inspiring as it must have been before, and it also just wasn’t as interesting in its main character, thus preventing me to care about his journey more.

The main performance from Soulemane Deme is pretty good, but the character himself left a lot to be desired as he is very thinly developed and honestly rather dull. Others are also forgettable in a film that should have been a bigger character study for this particular storyline.

Where GriGris excels at is in the cinematography, which is quite strong and featuring some very well executed shots and takes. It also features a couple of very memorable dance sequences that elevate the entire movie to something a bit more cinematic.

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Whenever the film focused less on dialogue and more on visuals, it was terrific. But whenever it focused on forgettable dialogue and crime situations, it lost me. This director is better at audio-visuals and emotional storytelling, which makes this movie not as interesting as he rarely focused on those elements this time around unfortunately.