Art & Authenticy

“Min ye – Tell me Who You Are” a French play that beautifully and vividly portrays the African culture in all aspects – including marriage, family life, class distinction, gender bias and social traditions and customs. Although, the main story line focuses on Mimi, an independent married woman who cheats on her husband to punish him for having a polygamist marriage, the parts that caught me attention were the ones that gave me an insight in this fascinating culture. From the brightly colored traditional costumes to the relationship between the servants and master, it’s the cultural expression of this play that draws me towards this otherwise long and dragging play.

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I don’t like to generalize, but I’m sure the male audience members won’t agree with me when I say Souleymane Cisse was pretty sexist when he wrote Tell Me Who You Are. Polygamy, or the practice of multiple marriages, seems to be the norm in Mali for men, but when Mimi (played by Sokona Gakou) takes part in an affair, she seems like the bad guy. Why? Because she is a woman. I’m not saying I agree with all the decisions she made, but I am saying she was put in a tough spot – having to keep Issa’s family happy and searching for her own true “pleasure”, Abba.

Min Ye or Tell Me Who You Are certainly revealed a new way to look at polygamous marriage for me. The film shows none of the weak and passive personalities I used to associate with wives in polygamous marriage. However, the main character, Mimi, fails to appeal to me despite her strong personality and independent abilities. The melodrama focuses too much on Mimi’s buffoonery and leaves no ground for any self-respecting viewer to identify or sympathize with Mimi. Continue Reading »

Souleymanne Cisse’s “Tell Me Who You Are” had a common opinion amongst viewers on Thursday nights screening in The New York Film Festival. “This lady is insane, how many times is she going to cheat on her husband?” However, she is not insane, she is a true representation of a real woman. Regardless of class, social status, or cultural background, every woman wants to be valued. She wants flowers, candy, attention, and the first place in her husband’s heart. Continue Reading »

Watching Min Ye…(Tell Me Who You Are) was like watching Bring  It On replaying itself over and over and over. The level of  immaturity between Mimi, Issa, and Abba makes me wonder if the  producer, Souleymane Cissé, has miscalculated the age of his characters or American teenagers are just growing up to fast.

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Maybe I did not pay close enough attention to director Souleymane Cissé’s film, “Min Yé, Tell Me Who You Are”, but I seemed to have missed the main point. The film was meant to portray the injustice the main character Mimi must have felt when her husband Issa married another woman and what she had lived with for years; instead, it was one long, confusing film full of Mimi’s complaints and epic hissy fits. I felt no sympathy for her; if anything, I felt bad that Issa had to listen to her. This film had potential to be excellent, and truly cause its viewers to feel empathy towards women but instead just made me count down the 135 minutes of this film. If only the characters had been portrayed just a bit more differently, perhaps the film would have had a whole different aura instead of being both boring and biased. Indeed, the only lesson I truly learned from this movie is that sometimes a director’s view on a subject is so biased that it can be seen through every aspect of the film, most importantly the characters.

This movie made me realize how important likeable characters are to a story.  Some films are ‘made’ because of the sheer charisma and likeability of the characters.  This attachment is key because it allows “Suspension of Disbelief” to set in and allow deeper emotional involvement with the plot.

As I was watching this movie, I learned how not to portray a character.

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The much-anticipated “Min Yé…(Tell Me Who You Are)” – which premiered in New York’s 47^th Film Festival – was the comeback of director Souleymane Cissé after a 14-year absence. Though, as I’m told, this was not his best work, it was still an interesting film. It was my first independent film and while it did seem to drag on at times, it gave me an inside look at another culture. The way in which and mannerisms with which the women spoke was the most striking. It is nothing like American women and seems more dramatic. The only interesting part of the film was to notice how an (high pitched) “ehhh” functioned in their language. It was a common sound with so many different meanings, whether sarcastic or funny or angry. While I was disappointed, I do look forward to future independent films from him and other directors.