THE STORY – The film begins with a definition of its title: “DAO is a perpetual and circular movement which flows in everything and unites the world.” And then it proceeds to take us to the casting of Gloria, a character whose daughter is about to be married. An off-screen voice directing the casting session tells us that “the first step is to make this family”. Actors and non-actors are cast and brought together to become relatives who will all celebrate a wedding in Paris and commemorate the loss of their patriarch in Guinea-Bissau. Their individual stories and their common threads of heritage are woven together with fact and fiction as they travel between these two worlds; love, laughter, ritual, pain and history intertwined. Perpetual circular movement framing reality.
THE CAST – Katy Correa, D’Johé Kouadio, Samir Guesmi, Mike Etienne & Nicolas Gomis
THE TEAM – Alain Gomis (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 185 Minutes
As indicated above, “Dao,” the fifth fiction feature film by French-Senegalese director Alain Gomis, begins with a title card that clarifies the title’s meaning, emphasizing the idea of perpetual, circular movement. It’s a nice statement of intent, given the project’s sprawling scope, ensemble nature, and lengthy running time, almost as though it were an African-themed version of “Short Cuts.” But it can also act as a warning, as the loose structure falls short of Altmanesque glory and is unlikely to appeal to anyone who’s not part of the most hardcore arthouse crowd (at the screening this writer attended, people started walking out approximately one hour in, partly due to scenes involving animal cruelty).
Following the introductory note, we see a casting session for the role of Gloria, a woman whose adult daughter is about to get married. As the candidates look into the camera, an off-screen voice explains that the purpose of the exercise is to find the perfect cast, combining professionals and non-actors, to create the right on-screen family. There are echoes of Mike Leigh’s method in those moments, as the British director famously develops his films’ stories through a long, improvisational rehearsal period with his actors. The notion of family is also highlighted in the closing credits, where many of the bit parts are played by Gomis’ relatives, sort of like Francis Ford Coppola casting his own parents, siblings, and children in the “Godfather” trilogy (where weddings also play a crucial role).
As such, the entirety of “Dao” is presented as a work of fiction—the unseen casting director is very clear about this—but its artifice is periodically exposed through interstitials about the creative process. On paper, it’s an intriguing concept. In practice, it leads to a meandering collection of ideas that never quite lead to a satisfying big picture. At times, it feels like the whole film lost itself during the editing process, which is quite weird given the picture has six credited editors (including Gomis himself).
Individual plot strands have a certain charm, particularly in the Paris-set nuptials, which have their fair share of joyous, infectious energy and performances that clearly show the success of the casting exercises. But even these scenes, in the context of a film that lasts three hours, begin to eventually suffer from the same repetitious feel that permeates the entire experience (one character’s volatile relationship with the other members of his family is amusing at first, but starts to get stale when the plot thread is revisited later on).
The other segments, revolving around a funeral in Guinea-Bissau and the ancestral traditions that still exist in the region, suffer from the same general problem: they feature only individual moments that come alive amid the uneven flow of disparate storylines, never quite forming a cohesive, resolved whole. As is often the case with Gomis’ work, they offer a fascinating glimpse into local culture, with dialogue in four languages (French, Wolof, Manjak, and the Guinea-Bissau variant of Creole). Still, it’s almost as if they should have been their own short films instead of tiny drops in an ever-expanding ocean.
Then again, it’s clear why the director wanted both plot strands to be part of this circular movement that is “Dao,” as they embody the cycle of life, death, and renewal with dual celebrations of one existence that has come to an end and another that can begin anew (the wedding portion of the film also includes a pregnancy subplot). But the juxtaposition feels awkward, sometimes forced, and it’s tempting to imagine how much better these stories would have flowed had they been split into two distinct films, not unlike Ulrich Seidl’s recent endeavors, which became much cleaner and leaner after an initial omnibus cut proved too unwieldy.
In its current form, the film is well-intentioned but messy, an exercise in multilayered storytelling that boasts a couple of truly dynamic sequences but otherwise comes off as sluggish as everyone loses the plot. All in all, its main achievement, and it’s not a negligible one, is probably that it provided a healthy amount of job opportunities in the regional film world, given Gomis’ well-known, admirable commitment to developing production and post-production facilities in West Africa.
