{"id":108785,"date":"2024-03-27T10:00:20","date_gmt":"2024-03-27T10:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gamefootballmobileanimeiphone.com\/?guid=5e31955146110f01bb2f8b921603af9f"},"modified":"2024-03-27T10:00:20","modified_gmt":"2024-03-27T10:00:20","slug":"disco-boy-review-a-bold-yet-banal-character-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gamefootballmobileanimeiphone.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/27\/disco-boy-review-a-bold-yet-banal-character-study\/","title":{"rendered":"Disco Boy review \u2013 a bold yet banal character study"},"content":{"rendered":"
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W<\/span>ith Franz Rogowski having established himself as one of the most singular and distinctive European acting talents gracing the silver screen today, and following his highly-lauded performance in Ira Sachs\u2019 Passages<\/a>, it\u2019s no surprise that audience anticipation levels would be high at the prospect of another Rogowski-led drama. In Giacomo Abbruzzese\u2019s feature debut, Rogowski plays Aleksei, a young Belarusian who, along with his \u201ccomrade in misfortune\u201d, Mikhail (Micha\u0142 Balicki) seeks a new life in France, where he finds himself trapped in a Faustian bargain. Clinging to the promise of a French passport, Aleksei joins the French Foreign Legion, a military corp that grants its foreign legionnaires a French nationality after three years of service.<\/p>\n

Rogowski plays the strong-willed, tormented Aleksei with nervous energy, aptly segueing between vulnerability, fragility and muted machismo. Just as we\u2019re about to be pulled into his narrative, Abbruzzese shifts his gaze to a village in the Niger Delta, juxtaposing the French Foreign Legionnaires with a guerrilla group fighting against the oil companies that are threatening their locality\u2019s survival. This is where we meet Jomo (Morr Ndiaye), the titular Disco Boy, who we\u2019re led to believe is Aleksei\u2019s alter ego. With all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, these parallel narratives serve to depict an image armed conflict from shifting points of view, until the two men are faced with one another in the Nigerian jungle, causing their destinies to intertwine.<\/p>\n

Jarring synths shifting in and out of phase within Vitalic\u2019s dark, abrasive score, form an impressive tapestry of sound that works well with the film\u2019s choreographic life force. This consciousness roots itself in sequences of traditional, kinesthetic dance around bonfires in Jomo\u2019s village \u2013 mostly through Jomo\u2019s sister Udoka (La\u00ebtitia Ky) \u2013 as well as sequences of the legionnaires\u2019 nightclub outings, training exercises and assault courses (in one jarring sequence, the soldiers are ordered by their general to chant the lyrics of \u00c9dith Piaf\u2019s \u2018Non, Je ne regrette rien\u2019 whilst marching in the cold). Comparisons to Beau Travail are indeed inevitable, with Rogowski\u2019s Aleksei joining Denis Lavant\u2019s Galoup in the Legionnaires Who Can Bust A Move Cinematic Universe.<\/p>\n

Once he returns to France, Aleksei is haunted by Udoka \u2013 her presence in the nightclub that the legionnaires frequent along with her hypnotic dance routines begin to bend his grasp on reality. Although these hallucinations can be understood as Aleksei going through PTSD, Udoka appears to be the sole human agent able to grant the film access to the pool of magical realism. This marks a potential ideological blindspot in Abbruzzese\u2019s attempt to make a film about the very experience of otherness, in that it succumbs to a depiction of African femininity as a source of mystery and intrigue.<\/p>\n

In the same way that, in the words of Edward Said, the Orient functions as \u201cthe West\u2019s surrogate and underground self\u201d, Aleksei\u2019s precarious relationship with reality being enabled by the spectre of a silent African woman does little to undermine the mythology of Africa as a heartland of magic and primitivism, always seen in relation to Europe, a place of rationalism and modernity. This isn\u2019t to say that the characterisation of Nigerians within the film is harmful, exoticised or idealised in any way; it\u2019s simply vague enough to circumvent those criticisms.<\/p>\n

The insertion of a comically smug American Vice journalist sent to report on the guerrilla group as \u201cthe Nigerian government\u2019s biggest enemy\u201d further distances the filmmaker from displays of such overt sensationalism. Unfortunately, Disco Boy is afflicted with the curse of trying to pack too much (in terms of both style and substance) into its 92-minute runtime, rendering it incapable of saying much at all.<\/p>\n

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