This
fugitive couple is sort of like a South African version of Breathless’s Belmondo and Seberg, but the country’s thorny race
relations and persistent corruption will further complicate their crime spree.
Once they start, they might as well go all in. At least that is how the very
white Echo and Derren see it in Jyoti Mistry’s Impunity (trailer
here),
which screens during the 2015 African Diaspora International Film Festival in
New York.
Echo
is not a nymph, but Derren is maybe slightly narcissistic. Nevertheless, they
might have made a nice couple together. Unfortunately, before the waitress has
a chance to accompany the waiting customer home after last call, she is sexually
attacked by the bar’s sleazy owner. Derren helps Echo kill him before he can
finish, at which point the die is cast. Despite the justification of their
actions, neither Echo nor Derren considers the possibility of justice. Instead,
they light off together, living in the moment as outlaw lovers.
Although
their first killing was a case of self-defense, their subsequent crimes become
increasingly problematic. Echo’s immediate codependency will lead to
destabilizing fits of jealousy, not wholly unlike the kind that fueled Fabrice
du Welz’s Alleluia. Both are also
apparently irresistible to South Africa’s multitude of races. A case in point
being the government minister’s daughter, who died a grisly death after
propositioning Derren. Her murder will put Pretoria police fixer Dingande
Fakude on their trail. Reluctantly, local Indian copper Naveed Khan will assist
his investigation, even though he openly questions Fakude’s motives and
intentions.
There
is a reason why “slow down and start from the beginning” is such good advice
for over-heated storytellers. Striving for artistic pretension, Mistry fractures
her narrative timeline, but the cinematic results fall maddeningly flat. With
little reason for each flashforward and backwards, exasperated viewers will
wonder why on earth they are being shown these scenes, in this order. The
periodic cutaways to surveillance footage of brutal unrelated crimes also feel
like old hat and are not particularly germane to the film from a thematic standpoint.
Such self-conscious busyness is a shame, because there is a kernel of something
buried within the film.
In
its depiction of systemic government corruption and still corrosive racial
attitudes, Impunity might have been a
more inclusive companion film to the J.M. Coetzee adaptation Disgrace. The evolving dynamic between
Fakude and Khan is particularly engaging and ultimately rewarding. It provides
a Dos Passos like survey of South African society, from privileged white gated communities
to still marginalized townships. However, Mistry’s structural and stylistic
gimmicks repeatedly take the audience out of the picture.
Nevertheless,
Alex McGregor and Bjorn Steinbach deserve all kinds of credit for their fierce
commitment as Echo and Derren, respectively. Their intensity helps sell their
reckless slide into outright sociopathic behavior. Desmond Dube and Vaneshran
Arumugam also develop terrific chemistry together, without overplaying the odd
couple buddy cop refrain. There are some impressive performances buttressing Impunity, but editors Melissa Parry and
Khalid Shamis apparently were not allowed to give it a more logical shape.
