X
- 1975
- Not Rated
- New Yorker Films
- 2 h 3 m
- 1975
- Not Rated
- New Yorker Films
- 2 h 3 m
Summary A corrupt politician is cursed with impotence on the night of his third wedding after embezzling 100 tons of rice.
Written By: Ousmane Sembene
- 1975
- Not Rated
- New Yorker Films
- 2 h 3 m
- 1975
- Not Rated
- New Yorker Films
- 2 h 3 m
Xala
80
User Score
Available after 4 ratings
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Where to Watch
Summary A corrupt politician is cursed with impotence on the night of his third wedding after embezzling 100 tons of rice.
Written By: Ousmane Sembene
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 11 Critic Reviews
80
100% Positive
11 Reviews
11 Reviews
0% Mixed
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 11 Critic Reviews
80
100% Positive
11 Reviews
11 Reviews
0% Mixed
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
This is not just a treatise on post-colonialism and class. Sembène boldly uses his female characters to comment on Senegal's chauvinist patriarchy.
The actors are wonderful, especially the women who play El Hadji's first two wives - ladies of magisterial personality, social shrewdness and sexual pride. The wedding sequence in Xala makes the one in "Godfather I" look like a wedding party at McDonald's. This allegory of impotence in the body politic shows Sembene on his way to becoming an African Moliere. [13 Oct 1975]
It is part fable and part satire, but it is much more: with the greatest fineness and delicacy, Mr. Sembene, the Senegalese writer and director who made this picture, has set out a portrait of the complex and conflicting mesh of traditions, aspirations and frustrations of a culture knocked askew by colonialism and distorting itself anew while climbing out.
Xala means sexual impotence, and the film, culled from his own novel, is a brilliantly funny, ironic satire about post-colonial Senegal. [21 Dec 2000, p.13]
Sembène depicts a corrupt system that replaced white dictators and profiteers with black ones; the symbolic ending, a glimmer of revolutionary hope, is as gratifying as it is implausible.
Despite the rather washed-out color photography it's very much worth seeing.
The major problem with the film is that the exposition is not nearly as clever as the premise. After warming to the idea behind the movie, one tends to cool off as it trudges toward a resolution.
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