Set in N'Djamena, Grigris sparks a striking discourse on life in the African country of Chad. The idea for this film was born when director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun discovered Souleymane Démé, a killer dancer with a crippled leg dancing in a club. Around Démé, Haroun creates the character Grigris, and directs a multifaceted narrative that spans several genres.
At night Grigris dances up a storm in local clubs while the crowd cheers and donates pocket money to help fund his passion. With his day job as a photographer, and his dancing, it seems Grigris has a good life. Then his step-father falls ill, and crushing medical bills force Grigris to consider alternative avenues to make extra money.
What begins as an art-house portrait of a unique character in a unique setting quickly takes on the tone of a thriller. Grigris accosts local tough-guy Moussa for a job in his operation: smuggling gasoline across the border into Cameroon, given that expensive fuel prices in Cameroon make smuggling from Chad, and especially Nigeria, a very profitable black-market venture. But this petrol smuggling is a tough job that requires a dangerous swim, not easy for even the able bodied, let alone someone with a disabled leg.
As the difficulties of the criminal life mount, Grigris’s social and family life decays, but his love life blossoms as his relationship with another sort of outcast, the beautiful Mimi (Anaïs Monory), is fast-tracked. Grigris eventually defects from Moussa’a gang and he and Mimi are forced to abandon their city life. While the couple attempts to outrun Moussa’s assassins, we get to see some rural Chadian life and culture.
While the film is rife with fantastic performances, Souleymane Démé as Grigris is the highlight. An untrained actor, it is obvious that Haroun tailored parts to suit Démé’s talents, but at times these riffs go too far, becoming tangents. While making for some physically impressive feats, occasionally these scenes seem gratuitous, adding nothing to the development of the film. We are never sure what Grigris makes of himself as a dancer, and the dancing theme is left unexplored when the film ends.
The film presents N'Djamena with the bustle of an attractive, exotic, cosmopolitan center that looks like a great place to visit, while at others we are shown the city as a stricken, crime ridden hotbed. Haroun is obviously aware of the masks that modern culture likes to force upon that which is considered ugly. In showing Chad with and without the masks, we are left to truly make up our own minds.
