Review: On Becoming A Guinea Fowl

Image courtesy of A24. 

Rungano Nyoni's "On Becoming a Guinea Fowl" is a strange slow burn of a film about a Zambian family's trauma that begins with a peculiar scenario that ultimately takes the viewer to some startling places.

As the picture opens, Shula (Susan Chardy) is driving home from a late night costume party dressed in what appears to be a Missy Elliott-like outfit when she sees something on the road, continues to drive a few more feet, sighs, and then stops. It's a man's body that turns out to be the corpse of her Uncle Fred, an individual for whom we get the sense she doesn't have much affection.

Shula places a call to her father (Henry B.J. Phiri) who doesn't seem too concerned and can't bother to tear himself away from a party. Finally, Shula's cousin, Nsansa (Elizabeth Chisela), shows up, seemingly drunk, and gyrates in front of the car while Shula takes direction on the phone from the police, who tell her they won't be able to make it until dawn. The police tell Shula to keep away from the body so passersby don't get any ideas regarding their role in the scenario.

Much of the rest of the picture involves Shula's family - which is dominated by several aunts who make their grief well known by constantly wailing - trying to work out the details for the funeral. The aunts are feisty and like to dictate, and they treat Uncle Fred's younger wife - with whom he seemingly has a lot of young children - pretty cruelly.

But there's clearly something going on that we can't quite put a finger on. Shula is pretty hush-hush about her past experiences with Fred, while Nsansa tells a somewhat humorous story about how he tried to force himself on her, but bumbled his way through it and failed. Not so humorous is how their other cousin, Bupe (Esther Singini), seemingly suffered through such a scenario over and over again. We get the sense that his failure with Nsansa wasn't replicated with Bupe.

"On Becoming a Guinea Fowl" takes its time getting where it's going. There's an expression about how it takes a village to raise a child, but in the case of this film it can be posited that a village can also corrupt the lives of the young by sweeping the crimes of one of its members under the rug. And that's exactly what is going on with Shula's family. When she mentions Fred's mistreatment of the family's younger women, she is told to leave the past in the past and that whatever wrongs he did will be buried with him.

There's an interesting sequence late in the picture in which we see a cartoon that Shula and her cousins must have watched as children. It describes the guinea fowl, a bird that has a loud screech that it uses to warn its herd when predators are lurking. This concept is used to great effect in the film's semi-surreal finale.

I have yet to see Ryoni's previous film, the acclaimed "I Am Not a Witch," but this new one proves that she has her own unique visual style and storytelling devices. This is a film that requires some patience, but it ultimately ends on a note that is thematically compelling and more than a little harrowing. Those with a taste for offbeat cinema will likely find it of interest.