Adú

Released 31st January 2020, Adú follows the separate stories of a young boy fleeing Cameroon, an estranged father trying to make amends to his daughter and the guilt of a civil guard. While the contrasting stories provided intriguing perspectives to life in (and around) the country of Cameroon, they fail to overlap to the extent and success of other anthology films such as Snatch or most Tarintino films. That said, the stories are still poignant on their own in tackling themes of guilt, family, freedom, survival and abuse. Álvaro Cervantes leads the civil guard storyline with a passable performance that conveys Mateo’s unease in the wake of an accident during an immigration attempt; however, his performance leaves more to be desired and his storyline ends up rather forgettable when compared to the others.

Moustapha Oumarou gives a surprisingly good performance as 6 year old Adú and does a great job in carrying his storyline. Adú is (naturally) written as an extremely innocent and therefore vulnerable individual who is easily manipulated by a couple of people across his story. That said, Zayiddiya Dissou and Adam Nourou aid Adú as his sister Alika and his friend Massar, respectively. Whereas Alika provides a gentle support (and a weaker performance from Dissou) earlier in Adú’s journey, Nourou is able to illustrate Massar as a gentle aid while also subtly alluding to a disturbing past with well implemented physical cues. Finally, Luis Tomar gives he standout performance as Gonzalo, the father of Anna Castillo’s Sandra. Tomar manages to apply a versatile physicalisation and vocal range to display Gonzalo’s emotions towards Sandra; he is written in a way that makes him tough on his daughter while also enabling the audience to acknowledge his efforts to connect with his daughter.

Anna Castillo also provides a strong performance as she grows to understand and subsequently accept her father’s tough love. While naturalistic and practical, the lighting is good enough with my only real qualm being that some sequences are too dim and sometimes difficult to see what is happening. Similarly, the soundtrack is rather bland and unmemorable despite serving the emotions of its scenes well enough. Overall, Adú is a powerful film which tells its stories and themes very well and is generally carried by strong performances of well written characters.