Premiering last year at the Cannes Film Festival, Tori and Lokita, from the two-time Palme D’or winning directing team of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennes, is soon coming exclusively to the Criterion Channel on July 18th. The film stars Joely Mbundu as Lokita, a 17 year old undocumented worker in Belgium, and Pablo Schils as the 12 year old Tori who Lokita watches over like a brother.
Mbundu and Schils carry the film with a genuine chemistry aided by Tori’s loving drawings he makes of his would-be sister. Other than the young boy Tori, everyone is antagonistic to Lokita, from the chef she runs drugs for to the man who smuggled her into Belgium and even her mother in Cameroon she tries to send money to for the education of her five siblings back home.
Tori has papers but Lokita doesn’t. We learn that Tori has fled his home country after being accused of witchcraft the moment he was born, an “enfant sorcier.” In the recent Augure from director Baloji, Marc Zinga played a sweet kind man living under a similar accusation. Here he is the smuggler who got Tori and Lokita into the country. With the aid of his female henchman (Nadege Ouedraogo), he offers the most convincingly menacing performance in the whole movie, demanding money from Lokita and having her entire body forcefully searched.
Other characters put her through the ringer too, but the moments of violence peppered throughout the story feel like they were improvised or hastily rehearsed. A slap to the face meant to shut her up comes across as almost playful. A scene where Tori repeatedly bonks one of their enemies on the head plays out like a cartoon where we know the characters don’t feel pain. Not that the movie needs realistic violence. It effectively leaves other harrowing moments off camera. But coupled with a very abrupt ending, it takes away from what is otherwise a mostly gripping story.
What is palpable is the claustrophobia of the marijuana grow-op Lokita has no choice but to agree to live and work in for three months. She is not allowed a phone and can only contact Tori for 30 seconds at a time when her employers/captors allow her to. For two young people whose lives were thrown together on a boat to Europe, the unbearableness of this separation comes across very powerfully.
The only kindness the film offers them is the kindness they show each other. I’m not sure if the abruptness of the ending is supposed to replicate the anonymity of the undocumented worker and the disposability imposed on them by society. The film reminds us that with official papers, life could be very different.
Tori bookends the films with singing. It starts with Tori and Lokita singing for the people eating at the chef/drug dealer’s restaurant. They get extra money for this and it’s possibly the only non-illegal way they have to make money, although every cent Lokita makes in Belgium is technically illegal. The most precious things they have are Tori’s drawings of Lokita, something no one can attach monetary value to.
In a midpoint scene, Tori goes to wire money for Lokita to her family. He asks an adult man to sign the paperwork since he’s a minor. The man asks what’s in it for him. Another man helps him out though without seeking anything in return. Taking the time to watch their story or any story is transactional in that you hope for a good payoff. All in all, it’s a good movie that leaves me wondering why do I want the violence to be more real and why do I want their lives to have a more satisfying ending.
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