Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.

August is when people scour the earth for vacation spots, where they can soak up the glamour and romance of famous locales without ever actually living there. This week I’m looking at two new movies about the people who live in popular tourist destinations. There are asylum-seekers in Paris, and psychic-debunkers in Niagara Falls.

Souleymane’s Story

Co-Wri/Dir: Boris Lojkine

Souleymane Sangaré (Abou Sangaré) is a young man on a bike. His friends call him Souleye de Paris. He earns his keep delivering meals to paid customers across the city using his smartphone to record the deliveries and pass on his next assignment. Other young men from West Africa look up to him as a role model, and beg him to help them become couriers too. But Souleymane’s life is more complicated than it seems. 

Originally from Guinee, he arrived in France as a refugee seeking asylum. His beloved girlfriend back home (they speak by phone) is talking about marrying someone else, and his mother seems particularly out of touch when he speaks with her. He is homeless, and sleeps in a dormitory far from the Gare du Nord. But he never gets a full night’s sleep because he is forced to wake up in the middle of the night to electronically reserve his next night’s bed. He catches a bus ride to and from the shelter, and if he’s late he’s forced to sleep in the rough. Even his delivery job is done on the sly, using someone else’s name who takes a large cut of each transaction (he’s undocumented and can’t work legally.) And everything he does is done for one goal: his asylum interview scheduled in just a few days. He’s studying hard to pass that ordeal. And to do that correctly, he needs to hire a coach to fill in the forms and train him on exactly what to say. 

So when an accident messed up a single delivery, his carefully constructed life suddenly becomes precarious. Can Souleymane keep his job, pay his asylum coach, and pass the government interview? Or will he be sent back to the country he fled?

Souleymane’s Story is a powerful, fast-moving, slice-of-life drama about a refugee in Paris. Souleymane is in constant motion, on a bike, climbing staircases, on trying to catch the metro or a bus. Most of the movie is in the form of a flashback as he waits for his immigration interview. And as it slowly builds to that event, everything leading p to it is exposed, climaxing in a heart wrenching, tear jerking finish. The dialogue shifts between French and a number of other West African languages, showing the polyglot nature of life in the big city. 

I don’t recognize the director or any of the actors, but it has a realistic feel. 

Good movie.

The Legacy of Cloudy Falls

Wri/Dir: Nick Butler

It’s summertime in the city of Niagara Falls. A group of long-term tenants at a seedy apartment building live in close proximity. Terry (Andrew Moodie) is a single, middle-aged gay, Black man who runs an unsuccessful souvenir shop. He spends his lonely days surrounded by fridge magnets and snow globes that nobody seems to want. But he has one goal: to locate the son of a man he once knew. Terry fantasizes about his next door neighbour, Edwin, a compulsive, body-conscious young man who lifts weights and decorates himself with home-made tattoos. Edwin (Josh Dohy) just appeared there one day, claiming he is the nephew of the hotel’s owner but Terry has never seen them together. 

Brigit  (Grace Glowicki) sees herself as a debunker of the lies and scams perpetrated by fortune tellers and mind-readers. (She’s also having an affair with a croupier at the casino, but that’s another story.)  She has a website devoted to her whistle-blowing, which no one seems to read. Still, she’s ready to catch her Moby Dick,  a man named Walter Pryce, due to arrive in town soon.  Pryce is a tele-psychic whose YouTube videos are watched by millions, and who Brigit vows to take down.

Finally there’s Riley (Amanda Martínez) a cynical, compulsive liar, who pretends she’s the director of a talent agency. She keeps her boss semi-conscious through the use of sleeping powders generously sprinkled into her drinks. But she feels strangely drawn to Calvin (Richard Zeppieri) a shy man who appears at the office one day, with dreams of becoming a professional  actor. These are just a few of the plot streams happening simultaneously in and around the apartments as recounted in a nasal voice by Rita (Susan Berger) a senior with bottle-red hair who sees everything going on at the Cloudy Falls.

The Legacy of Cloudy Falls is a comedy/drama about a group of quirky and tragically lonely characters as they interact with one another. (I kept hearing the lyrics to Eleanor Rigby in the back of my mind.) Vendettas, scams and conspiracy theories ebb and flow like the misty waterfall nearby. Amid walls painted with UFOs, no one seems to do what they’re supposed to be doing but somehow, still continue to get along. This film is retro kitsch mixed with Wes Anderson-style odd-balls. There’s something about Niagara Falls that brings all these strange people to one place — especially in movies. (I’m thinking Albert Shin’s Disappearance at Clifton Hill from 2019, for example).

This is director Nick Butler’s first feature after a series of shorts and many years oworking in casting for various TV series — which may explain the episodic nature of this film — stories that are linked and coexist but have their own separate narratives.

So if you’re in the mood for something whack but oddly compelling, check out this one.

The Legacy of Cloudy Falls opens on August 25 in Toronto, with Souleymane’s Story playing this weekend at the TIFF Lightbox; check your local listings.

This is Daniel Garber at the Movies each Saturday Morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website www.culturalmining.com.