German director Ulrich Köhler delivers a thought-provoking meta work where the film-within-the-film is just as compelling as the film. Gavagai is an ambitious look at power, betrayal, infidelity, racism (and reverse racism) as well as feminism, both modern and ancient.
When the film opens, Nourou (Jean-Christophe Folly) and Maja (Maren Eggert) are on location in Senegal shooting a revisionist version of Euripedes’s classic Greek tragedy, Medea, portraying Jason and Medea, respectively. Most of the extras are locals that aren’t being treated very well. The pushy and uber-anxious director, Caroline,(Nathalie Richard), decides that Medea (the only white character in her version of the tragedy) will no longer kill her children, which rightly outrages Maja.
Köhler then leapfrogs the audience to Berlin—continuously interspersing moments from the modernized Medea into the narrative—where Nourou and Maja have embarked on an adulterous affair. At the movie premiere, an uncomfortable experience with a racist security guard shakes up Nourou as well as the narrative, leading to a rather intense and fraught moment between the Polish guard, his friend and our protagonist.
I enjoyed this film and appreciated the timeliness of a lot of the themes being dealt with. There’s a press conference sequence that show just how ridiculous many questions asked by the click-bait-obsesses, cancel-culture-consumed press can be. And how unrelenting they are.
It’s also quite telling that initially Maja is much more bothered by the racial incident than Nourou. Köhler isn’t afraid to expose the irony of white liberal guilt.
The writer-director also brings up an important issue about whether artists have a right to rewrite and reenvision classic stories, and if, so, who exactly should be doing it? Is it okay for a female writer-director to reimagine a male-written tale from the female perspective? Julie Jackman’s Venice Film Festival entry, 100 Nights of Hero, retold the Sheherazod story via the queer female lens. But, then, Köhler is male and the director of Medea is a female character HE wrote—so are we to regard the film-within-the-film as bold or simply misguided? Honestly, Caroline’s ending felt more the latter—as well as Hollywood-ized.
In addition, the character of Caroline sets out to show a new version of a classic story to expose privilege and prejudice but then behaves in a completely contradictory manner.
While I appreciated the director’s constantly surprising us and daring us to judge his characters, I feel he could have pushed the envelope just a bit further when it came to dramatic daring.
There’s a lot to cinematically unpack in Gavagai. It’s definitely a drinks-and-dinner-after-to-discuss experience. And we need more of those, for sure.
Gavagai is part of the Main Slate at the 63rd New York Film Festival.
For tickets and/or more info visit HERE.
