The African Desperate

Name: The African Desperate
Genre: Drama
Released: September 16, 2022
Duration: 97 min
Rating: 72
Cast: Brent David Freaney, Diamond Stingily, Dillon Egyes, Erin Kelly Meuchner, Erin Leland

2022

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Generally favorable reviews based on 9 Critic Reviews

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Mixed or average reviews based on 4 Ratings

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Movie Details & Credits

MUBI | Release Date: September 16, 2022 | Not Rated

Starring: Brent David Freaney, Diamond Stingily, Dillon Egyes, Erin Kelly Meuchner, Erin Leland, Ruby McCollister

Summary: The African Desperate depicts 24 hours in the life of Palace (Diamond Stingily), a newly minted MFA grad from an upstate New York art school, whose final day of school becomes a psychedelic odyssey.

Director: Martine Syms

Genre(s): Drama

Rating: Not Rated

Runtime: 97 min

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Critic Reviews

Devika Girish

Sep 15, 2022

Drawn 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. Read full review

RogerEbert.com Peyton Robinson

Sep 23, 2022

Martine 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. Read full review

IndieWire Susannah Gruder

Sep 15, 2022

With 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. Read full review

Alex Saveliev

Sep 19, 2022

Syms’ debut is anything but desperate; au contraire, this is the mark of a relaxed, confident filmmaker with a long, bright future. Read full review

Andrew Crump

Sep 19, 2022

Syms packs The African Desperate with pleasing ingenuity that facilitates its complex perspective; this is a film that must be sat with to fully appreciate. Read full review

The Playlist Mark Asch

Sep 2, 2022

The 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 Read full review

The Guardian Peter Bradshaw

Oct 17, 2022

Stingily is relaxed and amiable, but in acting terms there may be nothing else there and the film doesn’t develop in any interesting direction. Read full review

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Brent_Marchant

Jan 20, 2023

Lampooning 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 (DiamondLampooning 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.… Expand

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