Félicité (2017)

Hats off to the touchingly lively performance here from Véro Tshanda Beya Mputu in the title role. She makes her living singing in a Kinshasa bar and life's fine until her teenage son finds himself in need of medical attention after a motor cycle accident. As you can imagine, that's all expensive stuff and suddenly her life is thrown into turmoil as she has to reprioritise quickly. She's a strong and confident woman, but when she encounters "Tabu" (Papa Mpaka) her whole raison d'être is challenged and she begins to realise that perhaps what she had before was but a shell of what she could have now - if only she can save her son! There are two strong and characterful performances holding this together and that, coupled with some busy and intense photography, really does imbue us with a sense of the vibrancy of her life, but also of it's frailty. For all her strengths, she is most vulnerable where any parent might be - when it comes to her child. The dynamic between the two doesn't play out quite as you might expect, and with the addition of plenty of local music and dance to deliver extra authenticity to this story, it comes across as a perfectly plausible tale of a mother's love. At times, "Félicité" has an affecting documentary look to it as auteur Alain Gomis takes his time to let the actors establish and build their personas in an engaging and watchable fashion.