Film - Atlantics (Atlantique)

Every love story is a ghost story

If only I’d seen the trailer that had these words at the end. Or the word ‘supernatural’ had appeared in the synopsis, I would have understood much better. Anyhow Atlantics is brilliant.

A spirited teenager in Senegal, Ada, has a marriage arranged to wealthy man although she is in love with Souleiman, a construction worker. After yet another alteration with his employer who owes him and many of his friends three months wages, Souleiman, looks forward to meeting Ada although clearly, his mind is elsewhere. Later we learn that he is one of the ‘boys’ a group of people who hang in an underground club have all disappeared, feared drowned at sea during a migration attempt to Spain.

When I see people building sky-scrapers, my tendency is to think the city is on the up so it’s a real heart breaker to learn that Souleiman is someone willing to risk his life to get on a boat to sail across the world away from Dakar and the girl he loves. We see Ada has having a crush on Souleiman at the start but we realise at the same time that she does just how deep the love is.

Once the boys are gone two people fall ill with mysterious flu-like symptoms and it’s here I got lost having not read the synopsis. The compelling interweaving of the cultural beliefs in this part of the world just served to draw me in more. Atlantics is so much more than classic young-lovers-kept-apart story and you don’t want to miss a drop of its intensity.

8/10