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‘On Becoming a Guinea Fowl’ Review: Trauma Takes on Grieving in Rungano Nyoni’s Darkly Transfixing Second Feature
Restless trauma fights patriarchal tradition at an abuser's funeral in 'On Becoming a Guinea Fowl,' Rungano Nyoni's transfixing second feature.
But a quivering collective fury scalds through the silence in Rungano Nyoni ‘s tremendous new film “ On Becoming a Guinea Fowl ” — as a group of young women, nursing the scars of sexual abuse, chafe against the quiet complicity of family elders when their shared perpetrator drops suddenly and none-too-sadly dead. “Guinea Fowl” opens on an image of stark absurdity, introducing Shula (Susan Chardy) as she drives serenely home from a fancy-dress party, dressed in a black puffa bodysuit of vast, balloon-like proportions, a ornate diamanté headdress concealing her expression from us. Legions of distant relatives descend upon her middle-class family home to cook, sleep, sew blood-red funeral robes and wail en masse — a shrill human symphony made all the more agitating against the droning minimalism of Olivier Dandré’s remarkable sound design — while Fred’s reputation is given a retrospective glow-up by all.
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