Faat Kine - Film by Ousmane Sembene

Faat Kine, like most other films of Senegalese director Ousmane Sembene, is a portrait done in the cinema engage style. Sembene, the Father of African Cinema, says, "The artist is like a mirror. His work reflects and synthesizes the problems, the struggles, and hopes of his people" (qtd. in Pfaff). With this in mind, one can perceive in this film the wide perspective of various social ills in post-colonial Senegal while simultaneously viewing a close-up study of an African woman who has risen above the patriarchal constrictions of her gender. Sembene says, "Africa's society and economy are held together today by women.” And this is the crux of Faat Kine premiered in 2000 about a forty-year-old single mother of two teenagers who has risen to wealth and power through hard work, perseverance over patriarchal control, and ownership of a Dakar gas station.

Throughout the film Sembene cleverly frames many shots with parts of cars either totally in the frame, partially in the frame, or moving in and out of the frame to remind us of the living contradiction that is Senegal. What better icon to use than cars and a gas station to represent modernity in the midst of an old third world country. Cars represent status symbols, individuality and power, and are remnants of colonization that seem to intrude throughout the ancient landscape in the film. In addition, gas stations are a male dominant business and Sembene chooses this venue to show Kine’s unique position of female power in this dominant patriarchal society. As the film begins, Sembene’s panned view of Dakar, Senegal’s bustling capital, offers a vast image of a city that is both a mixture of old and new living interchangeably. The viewer is immediately struck by the movement of cars speeding through the panned shot of what looks like a modern city with high-rise buildings lining the horizon. But this wider perspective that gives a sort of gestalt of post-colonial Senegal narrows with a subsequent scene that focuses on Kine’s pristine blue car driving to her gas station. The shot from the point of view behind her car places it centrally in the frame’s composition as she stops to let a few traditionally dressed women carrying buckets on their heads and babies on their backs cross the street trafficked by modern cars and exhaust. The women slowly walk out of the frame as we see Kine’s car powerfully press forward illustrating the contradiction between tradition and modernity both in the general landscape and specifically in the roles of women.

Not surprisingly, many scenes take place in Kine’s gas station and especially in her office where she is filmed most regally seated behind her desk, which looks out through slated windows onto her gas station kingdom. She calls her main attendant, (attendant to Kine, the gas station queen) with a sort of Marx brother’s brass horn that honks like an old bicycle or car horn. This comic touch adds to the visual message of both the power of a car’s horn and her power, which are connected. Cars come and go in many scenes. Sembene’s use of close-up of a woman’s hand with a gold bracelet handing money to the attendant framed by the side of her car, gives the impression that the car has a human arm, that the car and human are one; illustrative of how identity is connected with what we drive. In fact, Sembene takes us inside the car where the whole frame is the car and through a mirror shot of the woman in the driver’s seat looking in her rearview mirror as the attendant looks closely at the money she has given him, we begin to identify her. It isn’t until she is forced to get out of her car after the attendant shows Kine her fraudulent French money that we cement the realization that this is an arrogant, wealthy, young African woman. Kine does not accept this money nor the fake gold bracelet the woman attempts to pass off as payment, forcing the woman to leave her car (her “other” expensive accessory) at Kine’s station until she brings legitimate Senegalese money. Kine inhibits this woman from both leaving Senegal and committing a crime. In essence, Kine administers not only transportation, which is to say that she administers movement, but also morality. Kine is moving Africa into the future, changing the face of corruption, gender stereotypes and patriarchal abuses, and she is most definitely in the driver’s seat.

Cars frame other notable scenes as when Kine arrives at her station with her teenage son and daughter who have both successfully graduated from high school and are going on to college. As they exit her car, Kine stands on the driver’s side and reaches over the top of it to hold each of her children’s hands. The top of the car frames the bottom of the following three or four shot/reverse shots as Kine tells them that she will take out a loan to pay for their college if she has to. The car is not only between them, but supporting them as they are connected to each other physically, emotionally and genetically; symbolic of the importance and relevance of this object in their lives.

Through flashbacks of her story told by her mother we understand Kine’s character that has been shaped by African patriarchal hegemony. We find out that Kine worked her way up from a gas station attendant when very young after the birth of her illegitimate daughter by the seduction of her teacher. This ended her studies to become a lawyer when she is expelled. In another scene framed by cars, Kine goes to the parking lot after lunching with her girlfriends, and finds that her car is blocked by another car. The narrative that follows introduces her son’s long lost father as he approaches her after many years while she’s waiting for the owner of the blocking car. The following scenes are framed by either a wide shot of the cars in the parking lot or by a medium shot of her and her car. We get the back story of Kine and the father of her son through a flashback she has while sitting in her car looking at him; how he falsely represents himself and robs her of her savings. Surrounded and connotatively supported by the parked cars, the symbol of her success and modernity, she appears a formidable force to reckon with as she confronts this old relic of Africa with the sins he perpetrated on her and their son. She “runs him down” with her words. Earlier she asks her children “what category of man are your fathers?” The absentee fathers of her children both come back into their lives, but the corruption they bestowed on Kine is symbolic of the corruption this generation of men bestowed on post-colonial Africa. The owner of the blocking car eventually comes and it is Jean, a self-made honorable man as Kine is a self-made honorable woman. Together their children connive to get them married, but Kine and Jean are already attracted to each other. Symbolically, his car has allowed her to confront an aspect of the past. The contrast between Jean and the father of her son (in addition to past and future) framed with the cars around them becomes apparent. Neither of her children’s fathers owns a car, but Jean does and in an act of generosity we see him offer to take this man into his car to his home. But not before Kine and Jean exchange dialogue at the end of this narrative as she infuriatingly tells him to hurry and move his car because it is costing her money. He asks her why she is so incensed and briefly tries to calm her down. We might see this as a foretelling of Jean’s positive affect on Kine’s life if we are to take the last scene of the film as indication that they will ultimately be together. Even though this final scene is devoid of cars that frame the composition as in many previous scenes, Kine’s regal position in her bedroom chair with arms and legs open in a welcoming sexual come-on, is reminiscent of the power position she affects in her office chair, and indicative that Kine knows who she is and what she wants. She is what she has named her gas station, a “Total” human being.

Pfaff, Françoise. The Cinema of Ousmane Sembene: A Pioneer of African Film. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1984.