Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Breathe Umphefulmo

2015; Elsevier BV; Volume: 3; Issue: 9 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/s2213-2600(15)00325-2

2213-2619

Talha Khan Burki,

Musicology and Musical Analysis

South African director Mark Dornford-May certainly doesn't lack ambition. In 2005, he adapted George Bizet's opera Carmen for the cinema, transposing the action to Capetown's sprawling Khayelitsha township. The cast, none of whom had acted before, sang in Xhosa. The sparky and sinuous U-Carmen eKhayelitsha was a surprise hit, picking up the prestigious Golden Bear award at the Berlin Film Festival. For Dornford-May's latest work, he has shaped Giacomo Puccini's La Boheme into a politically minded tale of shanty-town destitution. Set once again in the tuberculosis-ravaged Khayelitsha, Breathe Umphefulmo does not have the verve of U-Carmen, the British-born director is betraying signs of a souring relationship with his adopted country, but it makes a valuable point about the ease with which the rainbow nation abandons its citizens. In truth, the source material proves an occasional impediment. Its place in the repertory notwithstanding, La Boheme is a stolid piece, dramatically and musically rather flat. For an opera composed in the 1890s, some twenty years after the first performance of Wagner's Ring cycle, and as modernism was stirring, La Boheme is defiantly old-fashioned. Dornford-May sensibly excises most of the slapstick (in the original, act II culminates in a fat man falling off his chair) and streamlines the storyline. The title change marks a shift in emphasis from the travails of frustrated dreamers (Puccini based his opera on Henri Munger's 1851 novel Scenes of a Bohemian Life) to the prevailing blights of modern-day South Africa—the film opens with an inscription reminding the audience of the 2 million lives lost to tuberculosis in 2014. But the artistic milieu is retained; the characters all begin as students in one of the creative arts. The first half of Breathe Umphefulmo is a joyous and hopeful affair. The youngsters, penniless but full of life, have a great deal to look forward to—sepia-tinted flash-forwards imagine their graduation days. Lungelo (Mhlekazi Moseia) lives in a draughty apartment with three friends. On the landing, he runs into Mimi (Busisiwe Ngejane). They fall in love with suitable urgency and hasten to the June 16 celebrations, a public holiday that commemorates the 1976 Soweto uprising. There, they encounter the flighty Zoleka (Pauline Malefane, the director's wife and star of U-Carmen eKhayelitsha) and her flabby paramour Ayanda, who, an on-screen inscription informs us, is a “local politician, embezzler, womaniser”. After their encounter with Ayanda, a brief ruckus occurs that results in their ejection from university, and the tenor changes. Mimi's tuberculosis worsens, and poverty begins to bite. They shift from their apartment to a shack, and scrape a living selling flowers by the roadside and washing cars. The point is pretty unambiguous: far from alleviating the country's disorders, South Africa's politicians actively contribute to them. The optimism of the early days of the post-apartheid era—the June 16 holiday is known as Youth Day—has been supplanted by the dark realities of unemployment and infectious disease. Mimi's inevitable doom occurs outside, in a raggedy armchair in an underpass. This is a country where people die in the open, from epidemic diseases that show little sign of abating. Unfortunately, Breathe Umphefulmo's fiery political instincts do not compensate for its uneven pacing and meandering plot. The supporting cast is competent and engaging, particularly Malefane (although she is not given enough to do), but the two leads seem slightly diffident. The film does start strongly. Lungelo and his flatmates are good company and their carefree antics make for an amusing spectacle. Puccini has one of his protagonists bring his friends a stolen feast; Dornford-May appropriates the scene, but has marijuana added to the comestibles. Yet he shows nothing like the same enthusiasm for updating the dialogue—the exchanges on love, even allowing for the youthful pretensions of the characters, feel stale and stilted. The singing is efficient and the staging well-organised, but Breathe Umphefulmo is simply lacking in drama. The final shot, sweeping upwards to the traffic clogging the roads above, suggests a country that remains reluctant to confront its underlying misery. South Africa is, after all, one of the BRICS nations, frequently touted as a future economic powerhouse. But unless it can find a way to mobilise the hundreds of thousands who live in places like Khayelitsha, the country's keynote will be thwarted potential. Still, Breathe Umphefulmo does offer some cause for hope. The care that Lungelo and his friends lavish on Mimi speaks of a new generation that has the will and wherewithal to look out for each other. This can never replace a strong state, but it is an improvement on the corruption of Ayanda and the faceless indifference of the university that unjustly closed its doors on them. Breathe Umphefulmo Directed by Mark Dornford-May. 2015, UK/Germany/South Africa, 88 min [Xhosa with English subtitles]. Breathe Umphefulmo Directed by Mark Dornford-May. 2015, UK/Germany/South Africa, 88 min [Xhosa with English subtitles].