Pi@LFF: ‘Farewell Amor’
Featured in the BFI London Film Festival 2020, Ekwa Msangi’s debut film “Farewell Amor” is a touching reflection on the endurance of family, love, and memory through extraordinary circumstances.
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With flowers, a teddy bear, and chocolate in hand, a man stands at the arrivals section of JFK Airport. Announcements can be heard in the background as his silhouette is joined by two others: his wife and daughter, whom he hasn’t seen in almost two decades. With a hug and a kiss, “Farewell Amor” situates a remarkable family reunion in an otherwise ordinary place, establishing the tone of the rest of the film. Through the stories and interactions of these characters, the film explores the importance of love, memory, and migration with understated tenderness and uncomfortable realism, pondering whether a sense of home and family can be preserved in the wake of both physical and emotional separation.
Premiering this year in competition at Sundance, “Farewell Amor” is the directorial debut of Tanzanian American filmmaker Ekwa Msangi. Greatly expanding on her short film “Farewell Meu Amor” (2016), the movie follows Walter, who immigrated to the United States to escape the Angolan Civil War and has been struggling for 17 years to get his wife, Esther, and his daughter, Sylvia, to join him. The family’s adjustment period is expertly depicted, not only as Esther and Sylvia learn how to navigate a new country, but also as they all attempt to become a family again. Told from the different perspectives of its three main characters, “Farewell Amor” brings a very personal journey to life against the backdrop of a New York City bursting with music and vitality.
The film is divided into three sections, each named after one of the family members and portraying most of the same events from their own point of view. This structure is effective in presenting the disparity and diversity of experience: how the same events are felt and understood differently depending on the knowledge and context each character possesses. This is supported by subtle changes in acting, as well as in the editing and use of music, which make the stories feel personalised and distinct. With each new segment, “Farewell Amor” slowly builds a clearer picture of the lives of Walter, Sylvia, and Esther. This way, the narrative isolates them into their individual perspectives, but also unites them. By the end of the film, it becomes apparent that the events in the life of this family cannot be understood independently: they complete each other’s story.
The unique emotional stakes which “Farewell Amor” presents are developed through the cast’s brilliant acting and reflected in Bruce Francis Cole’s cinematography. As the film progresses, the nuances of the characters’ experiences are portrayed in small moments and casual conversations, which the actors carry out with sensitivity and restraint. Zainab Jah in particular is able to project the isolation and desperation that Esther allows herself to feel in private, since she is far from the community she left and estranged from the husband she waited so long to see. As the family adapts to their new dynamic, they often dance around each other in Walter’s small New York apartment, their physicality expressing their uncertainty. There is a palpable awkwardness in their exchanges and movements, which is heightened by the limited space and close framing, making their closeness feel claustrophobic instead of comforting. The cinematography skilfully depicts their dichotomous situation as members of a family who are, nevertheless, strangers to one another: more distant in their intimacy than they were when they were geographically separate, but who nonetheless long for closeness and normality.
As the film progresses, we begin to understand these characters better as, simultaneously, they refamiliarise themselves with each other. Through conversations, passing remarks, and inside jokes, we start to hear stories about how Walter and Esther met, how the Civil War shaped their struggles and fears, and why Sylvia stopped waiting for her father to call every week. Although it would have been very easy, the movie holds itself back from overusing flashbacks or dramatising the characters’ previous journeys in Angola, Tanzania, or New York to satisfy the viewer’s understanding. “Farewell Amor” reflects on the past while still being deeply rooted in the present, organically and delicately displaying the family’s different layers of intimacy. The result is a film where we are given the opportunity to witness it all as outsiders, while also leaving these events as mere anecdotes from the characters’ private lives.
“Farewell Amor” is a poignant and emotionally complex film which feels especially current and urgent in its realistic depiction of an immigrant experience. The world this family inhabits – although within New York City – feels eclectic and diverse, filled with a vibrant community of immigrants from around the world who have their own stories and complicated relations to the concept of home. The specific difficulties faced by migrants and Black people in the U.S. are acknowledged with the same compassion as topics surrounding the Angolan Civil War or the forced migration that resulted from it. Yet the film’s strength rests in its emotional core, situating its conflict tightly within the fabric of the relationships that the characters are trying to repair. While it might not offer all the answers, “Farewell Amor” asks the right questions about the nature of home and the power of love, tentatively pointing towards family as our best hope of finding both.