On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, a black dramedy directed by a breakout auteur star,Rungano Nyoni, has been getting exclusively rave reviews since its premiere in the Un Certain Regard section of theCannes Film Festivalin 2024. This truly uniqueA24piece,now available to watch at home, manages to pull off one of the hardest tricks in cinema:talking about serious, tough matters while maintaining a tone that keeps the film engaging and captivating. Like manydark comedies, Nyoni’s film, set in her native Zambia, starts with death, when its young protagonist, Shula (Susan Chardy), finds a lifeless body on the road while coming back from a party (and dressed in a titular guinea fowl’s costume no less). After a series of phone calls, another woman, Shula’s cousin, Nsansa (Elizabeth Chisela), arrives and, after inspecting the body, starts dancing—thus, setting up the film’s very specific intonation that’s always skirting around the darkness but never forgetting about the promise of light.
What Is ‘On Becoming a Guinea Fowl’ About?
The dead body on the nocturnal road is actually Shula’s uncle Fred, which is a fact that both she and her cousin seem strangely indifferent about. But themovie doesn’t attempt to venture into thriller territory, revealing the mystery almost right away—it turns out, seemingly all the younger women of the family, including Shula, were the victims of Fred’s sexual abuse when they were kids. This horrific facthasn’t really been a secret in this family for years, yet the older generation, both women and men, don’t see the need to stir up what they view asmatters of the past. Butno acts of violence or torment ever truly stay in the past, so in the midst of the aftermath of this death, no one really seems to care about all that much; the ugly truth inevitably taints the present.
The 24 Best A24 Movies of All Time, Ranked
A 24-film sampling of A24’s releases to date.
ButOn Becoming Guinea Fowlsees sexual violence, as well as the shame and deafening silence that surround it, as ahorrible symptom of something bigger—a patriarchal society that keeps holding on to its practicesand routines that existed for generations. Here, it takes the literal form of a ritual—or a series of rituals tied to burial and the supposed mourning. A reluctant Shula is manipulated into participating, but as the film goes along, she questions all of it: the customs that seem to have long lost all of their meaning, thegaslighting, the passive-aggressive behavior, and the blatant abuse of the ones who are weaker—in this case, it’s Fred’s much younger widow, who, as it is strongly implied, had also been his victim at some point. But most of all,Shula brings into question the veil of silence around the horrible things that everyone knowsbut chooses to keep quiet about.
Despite Its Serious Topic, ‘On Becoming a Guinea Fowl’ Never Gives Way to Despair
There is an obvious generational divide inOn Becoming a Guinea Fowl. Whilethe younger members of the family clearly feel uncomfortable within the bounds of a conservative society, the older generation prefers to stick to the norms and customs that they believe worked so well in the past. In this sense, Shula has an interesting perspective of someone who is not yet fully outside the system but isn’t entirely within it either, which is emphasized throughout the movie by thecameraworkthat intentionally remains slightly detached even in the most emotional moments. In a way, the director, Rungano Nyoni, whose family left Zambia for Wales when she was nine, has a similarperspective that allows her to navigate her Zambia-set stories with knowledge and lived-in experiencebut also tocut much deeper into the realityat hand.
Nyoni’s first feature, 2017’sI Am Not a Witch, which was also presented at Cannes, despite telling a vastly different story, also touches on the themes of prejudice, shame, and exclusion. In that film, a nine-year-old girl, also tellingly named Shula, is accused of being awitchand becomes a pariah whose supposed abilities are both frightening and coveted by those around her. The duality is also at the core ofOn Becoming a Guinea Fowl:the dichotomy of remaining quiet versus obtaining a voice. The titular guinea fowl isn’t just the original costume Shula is wearing at the beginning of the movie; it’s a bird who possesses a powerful agency in its voice, as we are informed at some point by a TV program playing in the background. These are birds who canuse their chattering to alert other creatures about the presence of a predator.
The 15 Best R-Rated Movies of 2024, Ranked
“There’s been a slight misuse of The Substance.”
Shula and several other young women in the film all feelthe instinctive need to speak out—the feeling that it is important. Disproving what their older relatives accuse them of,digging into old wounds, and saying things out loud doesn’t come easily for any of them, as one person is driven to a suicide attempt, the other creates a fantasy in which she was actually able to defend herself, and Shula, while openly speaking up for the others, is unable to confess her own truth to her ignorant father. With the abundance of night scenes in the film, it almost seems like the story indeed takes place over the course of one endless night. But the days go by, filled with senseless rituals, and these young women, whilenot exactly done with healing, do take the first steps towards what it means to become a guinea fowl. Thesame goes for Nyoni’s film: it’s the one that desperately needs its voice to be heard—and now a wider audience has an opportunity to do just that.
On Becoming a Guinea Fowl
In On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, a young ornithologist in Uganda becomes obsessed with unraveling the mysterious behaviors of guinea fowl, facing challenges that test her dedication and resilience. As she delves deeper into her research, her personal journey intertwines with cultural and scientific discovery, offering profound insights into the natural world.
