Cinema: Justin Pearce
Rue Princesse, by Ivorian director Henri Duparc, appears at first like a made-for-television movie. It takes the form of an extended situation comedy with a judicious dose of sticky moments, escapist glamour and mild sexual innuendo — not to mention a happy ending. But its script has an edge to it that takes it beyond the realm of sundowner-time entertainment into a cutting satire on upper-class morality and double
The film’s premise is that all the men of the urban elite are, sooner or later, going to run into one another in Rue Princesse, the red-light district inhabited by a sisterly coven of prostitutes. Businessmen do it, policemen do it, and the only rule is not to breathe a word about it.
Religious and traditional sensibilities are covered with terse abandon: an archetypal wise old woman, asked by her grandson if it is all right to marry a prostitute, replies: ”As a Catholic I say yes. But as an African woman I say no.”
Inevitably, the film touches on the topic of Aids, with the same wry touch that it brings to everything else. Government-issue condoms end up being used to make ice lollies. When the prostitutes go for their HIV test results, it turns out that one of them is acquainted with the (male) doctor — guess where from.
The film is vaguely reminiscent of Pedro Almad_var’s work in its portrayal of corruption seeping into every crack in the social varnish, allowing the marginalised characters — women in particular — to find creative means of assuming control. Its pace is slower than Almad_var, though, its situations less far-fetched, its emotions less histrionic.
And — it’s here that the film owes more to prime-time TV than to European cinema — Rue Princesse’s outlook is ultimately optimistic. It’s a message of hope for Africa of a kind that would give the Pope nightmares.
Rue Princesse is at the African Film Festival in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Pretoria