With ‘Saloum,’ Jean Luc Herbulot Has Created Something Unique

Aesthetic response is as varied and distinct as there are people on the planet. Attempts to codify anything as quixotic or contradictory as personal taste would be subject to numerous complexities and innumerable qualifiers. Having said that, “Saloum,” a Sengalese film helmed by Jean Luc Herbulot, presses a particular pleasure button of mine, a cinematic species I’ve come to label, “Who Thinks Up Something Like This?” “Saloum” can be compared to a host of things and yet is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. In that regard, Mr. Herbulot, who wrote the screenplay based upon a story he developed with a “partner in crime,” Pamela Diop, would’ve made T.S. Eliot proud. In his seminal essay, “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” Eliot wrote that the work of the best artists is that in which “his ancestors … assert their immortality most vigorously.” The “concentration” through which precedent is engaged and transformed results in something new under the sun.All of which sounds impossibly highfalutin for a shoot ’em up that morphs into a monster movie. What Eliot would have thought of “Saloum” is, of course, anyone’s guess. But he might’ve taken a shine to how Mr. Herbulot engages not only with the particulars of African history, but with his medium of choice. The director has cited a bevy of cinematic influences — Sergio Leone, Akira Kurosawa, Jean-Pierre Melville, and Park Chan-wook are among them — all of whom are discernible in retrospect. During the course of watching the picture, though, there’s just too much crazy stuff going down to allow for genetic analysis.“Saloum” concerns itself with a fictional batch of anti-heroes quartered in a real location. The Kingdom of Saloum, located in West Africa, was established in 1494, colonized by the French in the mid-19th century, and absorbed into Senegal by 1960. The territory came to be known as much for its abundance of Wolof immigrants as for the Serer people, who founded the kingdom. (Wolof and French are the two languages heard throughout the film.) The Saloum we see in Mr. Herbulot’s film has been fictionalized into equal parts Club Med, socialist paradise, and Land of the Dead. The picture begins in 2003, the year of a military coup in Guinea-Bissau. We first encounter the Bangui Hyenas, an infamous trio of mercenaries, as they stride over a scattering of dead bodies. They’re an appealingly grizzled lot, our protagonists. The leader is Chaka (Yann Gael), ever steely, self-assured, and bearing a terrible secret. Accompanying him are the hot-headed Rafa (Roger Sallah) and Midnight (Mentor Ba), a towering figure whose vanilla-hued dreadlocks seem indicative of his supernatural capabilities.After kidnapping a Mexican drug lord and stealing a king’s ransom in gold bullion, the Hyenas make an unplanned detour in Saloum when their getaway plane encounters difficulties. Posing as travelers, they are welcomed by the resort’s proprietor, the suspiciously congenial Omar (Bruno Henry). In lieu of payment, Omar has his guests work on the premises for their meals and accommodations. Among his other clients is Awa (Evelyne Ily Juhen), a deaf woman who’s wise to the true identities of the recent arrivals.At which point, “Saloum” becomes a tangle of provocations, sidebars, and odd fillips, the most pronounced being the fluency by which the Hyenas engage in international sign language. Given the tangents upon which the story pivots — the exploitation of children, for one; the sustenance provided by the human soul, another — viewers might be excused for losing sight of coherent plot threads. Continuity is not yet Mr. Herbulot’s forte.When the Hyenas encounter spiritual forces hungry for flesh, all bets are off. Why these buzzing swarms of malice dominate the environs of Saloum is less important than how thoroughly they are of a piece with the film’s fidgety rhythms, uncanny sense of invention, and welcome moments of cutting wit. Let’s hope that Mr. Herbulot retains the energy and enthusiasm he evinces here going forward in his cinematic pursuits. In the meantime, “Saloum” is out of the ordinary, more than a little loopy, and recommended.

With ‘Saloum,’ Jean Luc Herbulot Has Created Something Unique

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