The sea is ever present in French writer-director Mati Diop's first feature film, Atlantics. The ghost-haunted love story follows Ada (Mama Sane) after losing her beloved Souleiman (Ibrahima Traoré), who disappeared one night on a raft aimed for Spain along with other boys in town. It takes place on the outskirts of Senegalese's capital, Dakar, which is the westernmost city on the continent and dug into a peninsula. The Atlantic laps at its sides.
Diop constantly cuts to the ocean. The sound of the waves crashing weave their way through scenes, like when Ada's mother chides her for not talking sweetly to the man she's being forced to marry. Or as Ada sits in her friend's nightclub, listening to Souleiman's voicemail message, realizing he'll never come back. The sea is always there—salty, violent, consuming.
The first time we see Ada and Souleiman together, it’s against the backdrop of a washed-out beach. The sun is so bright it makes the ocean look gray. "You’re just watching the ocean. You're not even looking at me," Ada playfully chides Souleiman, curled up on his shoulder. "You’re so beautiful," he responds. To both the Atlantic and his girl, presumably.
It is into this ocean that Souleiman and the other boys from their village secretly venture one night, after being denied their wages as construction workers by their wealthy boss. They hope that at the end of this treacherous thousand-mile journey they will end up on dry Spanish ground, with a better job and a phone to call back home. But in Souleiman and his company's case, neither happens. Their bodies and dreams are swallowed by the sea.
The Atlantic is the thread that binds Ada to Souleiman. It becomes a chorus that narrates from the wings: it is the sea that can be seen from Dakar's luxury houses that Souleiman helped build, but never saw payment from; the sea that Ada constantly, worryingly, looks into as if Souleiman's face, body, and soul would rise up and present itself to her, unharmed. The sea gives this ghost story a logic.
The rest of the film is deliciously supernatural, inspired by a Senegal-specific djinn called "faru rab" or "lover spirits," which are spirits of dead men who take possession of women's bodies at night. A sea tale if there ever was one. Even the score evokes the Atlantic, composed by Kuwaiti electronic musician Fatima Al Qadiri (who almost drowned at the age of 10 and is terrified of the ocean). It's all murk and twang, sounds that could conceivably rise up from the depths of the Atlantic.
Atlantics screens in perpetuity on Netflix.
