‘Farewell Amor’ an immigrant saga with heft and distinction
The debut feature of NYU graduate and TanzanianAmerican writer-director Ekwa Msangi, “Farewell Amor” begins with the simplest narrative gambit, the
arrival at JFK airport of Esther (Zainab Jah) and Sylvia (a breakout turn for Jayme Lawson), the wife and daughter of Angolan cab driver Walter (Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine), after 17 years of separation because of the decades-long Angolan Civil War. The war displaced Esther and Sylvia to Tanzania, where Esther became a fundamentalist Christian.
Squeezed uncomfortably inside Walter’s one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, the family tries to move ahead. Walter and Esther try to reignite a sexual relationship in spite of the fact that Walter has had an ardent relationship with a local nurse named Linda (Nana Mensah), whose mail still comes to his address.
The tall and beautiful Sylvia for her part attends local high school, where she is labeled “the African,” mocked for her dress and where she attracts the attention of a young man named Devon Jameson aka DJ (Marcus Scribner of TV’s “Blackish”). Sylvia is a dancer who rehearses in her tiny space, where one wall is a sheet, and aspires to compete in an upcoming contest.
Her parents used to dance as well, and unbeknownst to Esther and Sylvia, Walter, who has a collection of snappy caps and hats, visits a dance club where he is a regular and where he takes a hip-swinging turn with his not-so-old flame. Yes, that is Angolan semba, kizomba and latin musical maestro Bonga you hear singing in the background. Bonga, too, was washed up on foreign shores by the civil war.
Esther turns Walter’s apartment into a church-like dwelling. The family attends a service where she puts way too much money into the collection basket. The film, which is low budget but finely made and lovely to look at and listen to (the score is lushly African), is divided into sections devoted to each of its three main characters.
Writer-director Msangi was inspired by Spike Lee’s “School Daze” as a young person interested in film. One of the supporting cast’s biggest assets is Lee’s sister Joie Lee as the family’s charismatic next-door neighbor Nzingha, who takes the troubled Esther to the local Egyptian market, a leftover of a Middle Eastern community, Nzingha explains.
“Farewell Amor” is about life’s basics: family, dislocation, shelter, friendship, clothing, education. It is the specifics that make the story unique and special. Msangi and cinematographer Bruce Francis Cole shoot the airport family reunification in virtual silhouette, one of the earliest animation techniques in film, giving the sequence an elemental quality. We are made to imagine Walter and Esther as a young couple sneaking out to “secret parties” in war-torn Angola to dance in “matching outfits.” Sylvia still texts a friend back in Dar es Salaam, who refers to her mother as “Thou Shall Not Dance Esther.” These are the little touches that humanize an immigrant story and give it heft, substance, resonance and distinction.
The “Flashdance” school competition, which resembles a contact-free UFC match, did not really work for me. But “Farewell Amor” is an impressive step forward for an artist who knows how to work with actors, tell a story and what makes a story important. Can a Bonga biofilm be next?