The first 24 hours as an MFA. Palace (Diamond Stingily) is a tall black Aquarius and a sculptor on the up. She was in the Venice Biennale, among other shows, which pisses people off; they think her success is not because of her art, but other attributes. She is exhausted, frustrated, and wants to go home to see her family. She plans a silent protest to not attend the graduation party, even though she has promised DJ. In her first feature film, artist Martine Syms applies her ... (Full plot summary below)
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The first 24 hours as an MFA. Palace (Diamond Stingily) is a tall black Aquarius and a sculptor on the up. She was in the Venice Biennale, among other shows, which pisses people off; they think her success is not because of her art, but other attributes. She is exhausted, frustrated, and wants to go home to see her family. She plans a silent protest to not attend the graduation party, even though she has promised DJ. In her first feature film, artist Martine Syms applies her celebrated conceptual grit, humor, and social commentary to the cinematic form, where the natural beauty of upstate New York abuts the Day-Glo druggy haze of an art party. With a banging soundtrack and cinematography that references street photography, giddy gonzo cinema and 1990s high-school romcoms, The African Desperate ultimately chronicles the need for release and emancipation from mental slavery.
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| RogerEbert.comPeyton RobinsonMartine Syms has a singular voice, flowing with creativity. Using her own background as an artist, Syms has taken artistic academia and the whiplash of exiting the comfort of school and churned it into a jungle juice of weed, ketamine, and self-discovery. |
| The New York TimesDevika GirishDrawn from Syms’s own experiences as a visual artist, The African Desperate is less an art-school parody as it is a portrait of existential incongruity, where contempt mingles with deep affection. |
| Paste MagazineAndrew CrumpSyms packs The African Desperate with pleasing ingenuity that facilitates its complex perspective; this is a film that must be sat with to fully appreciate. |
| Film ThreatAlex SavelievSyms’ debut is anything but desperate; au contraire, this is the mark of a relaxed, confident filmmaker with a long, bright future. |
| The PlaylistMark AschThe African Desperate is the work of an artist who has moved fairly seamlessly from the gallery to the cinema and has more than enough vitality and insight to join the canon of films about the Black experience in higher education |
| The Film StageLeonardo GoiThe African Desperate is an electrifying, riveting odyssey, and Stingily—with her deadpan humor and no-nonsense swagger—makes its ending all the more cathartic. |
| IndieWireSusannah GruderWith its everyday setting and social interactions mixed with an obtrusive, innovative soundtrack (composed by the band Aunt Sister, along with Colin Self and Ben Babbit) and hyperactive visual style, The African Desperate straddles the line between shock and banality. |
| Slant MagazineWilliam RepassThat The African Desperate is a send-up of art school is beyond doubt, but what’s less clear is just how far the satire goes. |
| The GuardianPeter BradshawStingily is relaxed and amiable, but in acting terms there may be nothing else there and the film doesn’t develop in any interesting direction. |
| User ReviewBrent_MarchantLampooning a supposedly revered sacred cow often provides great fodder for insightful satire and raucous comedy. And, at the outset of writer-director Martine Syms’s debut feature, the filmmaker seems to be off to an auspicious start. In this tale of an African-American woman (Diamond Stingily) seeking to complete her MFA degree at a prestigious private college in rural Upstate New York, the picture launches with a wicked skewering of the pretention underlying university-level fine arts education. The dumbfounding stream of consciousness pseudointellectual observations of the degree candidate’s ivory tower professors – who end up quibbling amongst themselves during their student’s dissertation defense – is incisively hilarious, exposing these alleged erudite blowhards as the supercilious, superficial frauds they truly are. Unfortunately, despite this brilliantly crafted initial setup, the picture woefully declines from there, not really knowing where it wants to go. Much of the ensuing narrative is devoted to a drug-infused celebration in honor of the new master’s degree holder, but it’s so rambling in nature that it becomes irrelevant and uninteresting. That problem is further compounded by the picture’s uneven, ill-defined development of the protagonist’s character, leaving audiences often wondering exactly who she is. Indeed, given the foregoing, one can’t help but speculate, why does this “story” even exist? Admittedly it’s presented with some inventive cinematography and a lively, colorful production design, with a capable performance by Stingily. But, as this offering limps toward its lame, unimpressive conclusion, it grows ever more tiresome and tedious, a huge drop-off from its superb start. Maybe it’s because that’s all this release had going for it to begin with, and what followed was merely an attempt to stretch out that concept into a feature-length production. That’s too bad because, with further development, this might have been a sidesplitting romp. As it stands now, however, it’s little more than a great opening sketch followed by a lot of would-be comedic flotsam. |
