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HELLO SOULEYMANE
GOODBYE SOLO (R) The third feature from
writer-director Ramin Bahrani was shot in
Winston-Salem, NC, where Bahrani was born.
But the American South depicted in Goodbye
Solo bears few of the standard hallmarks usu
ally trotted out in films set in the region:
there is not a trace of "redneck" culture, little
evidence of racism, and almost no country
music on the soundtrack. The film's milieu is
fully urban, and its cast is at least as racially
and ethnically diverse as that of Bahrani's last
feature, Chop Shop
(2007), which was
set in the great melt
ing pot of New York
City. When one of the
protagonists, William
(Red West), tries to
explain to the other,
Solo (Souleymane
Sy Savane), who
Hank Williams was,
Solo responds with
uncomprehending
forbearance. William,
the white native
Southerner, is the alien in this America.
He is also the cipher of the film, which
opens with William in the back of Solo's taxi
cab, trying to hire the driver for a one-way
trip to a mountain landmark called Blowing
Rock later that week. Solo, a gregarious and
sensitive Senegalese immigrant, immediately
voices his concern that William intends to
commit suicide by jumping off the mountain,
but William doesn't respond. As the two men
fall into a tense and unlikely friendship, Solo's
dogged attempts to discern what is troubling
William, and William's sometimes ferocious
resistance to Solo's attempts to help him,
form the dramatic heart of the story. The film's
title is the phrase not spoken at the film's
lovely, haunting climax.
Bahrani's influences are well-digested but
readily apparent; his gritty, unadorned visual
style and sympathetic
depictions of eco
nomically struggling
characters owe a lot
to Italian neo-real
ism, and it's hard not
to see Goodbye Solo's
central conceit as at
least a partial nod
to Iranian director
Abbas Kiarostami's
Taste of Cherry. West
is perfect as the
closed-off, crusty
William, and Diana
Franco Galindo makes a winning debut as
Solo's stepdaughter. But the real revelation of
the film is Savane, a marvelously charismatic
and versatile performer in a wonderfully con
ceived starring role. I look forward to seeing
his, and Bahrani's, work for years to come.
Dave Marr
Red West and Souleymane Sy Savane
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