Kinshasa Kids Reviewed by Lee Marshall


Weaving between documentary and drama, Belgian director Marc-Henri Wajnberg’s first feature for almost 20 years tells the sometimes horrifying, sometimes uplifting story of a group of street kids from Kinshasa in the Congo, cast out from their families after being suspected of harbouring evil demons, who find some kind of redemption through music. The resilience of these abandoned youngsters is mirrored


by the feistiness of a film crew that keeps shooting through police checks and bystander interference, in a series of near- documentary scenes that seem unscripted. In the end, though, Kinshasa Kids is most obviously a feel-good story in the long-running ‘society outcasts form a band and achieve success’ genre — and it is here that it does not quite deliver. Tough to watch at times, at others self-consciously artsy in


Outrage Beyond Reviewed by Lee Marshall


If a successful yakuza-movie formula ain’t broke, why fix it? Outrage, which previewed at Cannes in 2010, was a welcome return to box-office kudos as well as artistic form for maver- ick Japanese film-maker Takeshi Kitano. The actor-director with the lived-in face stays on safe ground with this sequel — to the extent of resurrecting characters who had appar- ently been killed in Outrage. And if this initially over-talky film takes a while to lift off, it does become an entertaining mesh of inventive violence, black humour and an appeal- ingly unglamorous view of the Japanese underworld. Outrage was Kitano’s second most successful release in


Japan, and Warner is planning to release this sequel on 200 screens on October 6 — the biggest roll-out to date for one of the director’s films. Sales action in other territories should be brisk, though it may not all be with theatrical outlets in mind — many of Kitano’s loyal fanbase will probably end up see- ing this, as usual, on DVD or pay-per-view. Outrage Beyond brings two fresh ideas to the yakuza table


— the first is the notion of clans as companies that feature the same levels of inefficiency, bureaucracy and in-fighting as their legitimate equivalents. The second is to drop a police- man into the mix, not as heroic crimebuster but as a sly manipulator of clan alliances. Clan ‘chairman’ Kato (veteran actor Nishida) and his sly


underboss Ishihara (Kase) are part of the modernising wing that is leading this expansion, earning the hostility of the clan’s old guard. Wily detective Kataoka (Kohinata), who sees himself as a bit of a yakuza-squad Machiavelli, is plot- ting to use this old-guard resentment to drive a wedge between the Sannos and an allied clan, the Hanabishi. Kataoka also believes he can manipulate Otomo (Kitano,


who goes under the acting moniker of Beat Takeshi), a minor clan leader whose release from jail he has engineered, and whose death in Outrage is revealed to have been merely a rumour put out by the detective. Kitano reputedly built the script of Outrage around key


explosions of violence. Though we have to wait a while for the gore to arrive in this sequel, when it does come it is tasty enough. Out-and-out shouting matches between suppos- edly composed clan members are another forte of Outrage Beyond — a film that always has humour bubbling beneath its hard-boiled surface.


n 22 Screen International at Toronto September 7, 2012


SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS


Jap. 2012. 112mins Director/screenplay Takeshi Kitano Production companies Bandai Visual, TV Tokyo Omnibus Japan, Warner Bros Pictures Japan, Office Kitano International sales Celluloid Dreams, www. celluloid-dreams.com Producers Masayuki Mori, Takio Yoshida Cinematography Katsumi Yanagijima Editors Yoshinori Ota, Takeshi Kitano Production designer Norihiro Isoda Music Keiichi Suzuki Main cast Beat Takeshi, Toshiyuki Nishida, Tomokazu Miura, Ryo Kase, Hideo Nakano, Yutaka Matsushige, Fumiyo Kohinata, Akira Nakao, Shigeru Koyama


its repeated breaking of the fourth wall, Kinshasa Kids may struggle to find the sort of sensitive general audience it deserves. No slow starter, the film opens with a harrowing scene of terrified crying kids, some of them still toddlers, being subjected to exorcism in a ritual involving chicken innards and dead lizards. “Child witches are the root of all Kinshasa’s problems,” a mother fulminates — a widespread belief that is quantified in a closing caption. It seems that around 25,000 kids under the age of 18 live


on the streets of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s dirty, sprawling capital, many of them thrown out by their families after being suspected of being shegue, or sorcerers. Shot with handheld verve, Kinshasa Kids follows a loose


band of eight youngsters who hang out together and sleep on the rooftops of jerrybuilt shop and buildings. They make a living from odd jobs and petty theft; the girls are constantly at the risk of rape (one is played by Rachel Mwanza, who won a Silver Bear at this year’s Berlinale for her role in War Witch — a film that was actually shot after Wajnberg discov- ered her on the street and cast her in Kinshasa Kids). But the driving rap, reggae and hi-life music eventually


takes over and energises the lagging plot. A scene where the kids wander into a cacophony of competing choirs before stumbling into a full orchestral performance of Mozart’s Sanctus has a strange power, pregnant as it is with the prom- ise of purification through music — shaded with a wry hint at Africa’s colonial cultural legacy, and its enshrinement in the mindset of the continent’s ruling classes.


CONTEMPORARY WORLD CINEMA


Bel-Fr. 2012. 85mins Director/screenplay Marc-Henri Wajnberg Production companies Wajnbrosse Productions, Inti Films, Crescendo Films International sales MK2, www.mk2pro.com Producers Marc-Henri Wajnberg, Serge Guez, Peter Krüger, Georges Abranches, Riva Kalimazi Cinematography Danny Elsen, Colin Houben Editor Marie-Hélene Dozo Music Bebson de la Rue and Trionyx, The Diable Aza Te Main cast Jose Mawanda, Rachel Mwanza, Emmanuel Fakoko, Bebson de la Rue, Gabi Bolenge, Gauthier Kiloko, Joel Eziegue, Mickael Fataki, Samy Molebe


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