The African Desperate review – archly knowing art-world satire
Despite a (potentially) interesting central character and a genuinely confrontational and uncomfortable opening scene, this feature from artist and film-maker Martine Syms spins its wheels dramatically, with indulgent, undirected performances and ideas. It is archly knowing about the art world, yet never quite earns its putative status as satire: a movie about someone graduating from art school that itself feels like a graduation project.
The contemporary artist and writer Diamond Stingily (who has collaborated with Syms on other work) plays Palace Bryant, a young woman of colour about to undergo a viva voce exam from an uptight panel of advisors as part of her MFA degree. Some of them are supportive, some uneasy and one is openly sceptical about Palace’s claims to be creating work that engages with her African heritage. “Where’d you grow up?” she asks pointedly, a question to which Palace responds by calling her a racist. Yet later, at the graduation party, there will be hilariously derisive talk among Palace’s friends about other people’s claims to authenticity: “She’s not from Belarus – she’s from Las Vegas!”
Palace is clearly as well-read as any of the faculty or fellow students on her subject and we later find out that she appears to be exhibiting at the Venice Biennale, and yet she is also coolly laidback with everyone she meets, all the people crowding up to her, wanting to talk to her, hang out with her, have sex with her, or just be with her at that evening’s party, which Palace is not keen to attend. Palace shows a politely wry bemusement in the face of everyone else’s excitable behaviour, but exactly what she wants and feels is mysterious. Stingily is relaxed and amiable, but in acting terms there may be nothing else there and the film doesn’t develop in any interesting direction.
• The African Desperate is available on 21 October on Mubi.