Reasons to watch the Senegalese film Hyenas

Djibil Diop Mombety, the Senegalese director, made only two full-length films, Touki Bouki (qv) and Hyenas (1992) - both worth seeing. Hyenas closely adheres to its source, the play The Visit by the Swiss writer, Frederic Durenmatt; the visit, naturally, takes place in Europe (most of it in a train station - in fact the last production I saw of The Visit was staged in an abandoned train station!); DDM transposed the drama seamlessly to a small, remote town in the dusty and sandy landscape of Senegal. He also cast himself in the lead role, which is generally not a good decision - he's the strongest actor in the cast, but he seems indifferent to the performances of others, who routinely speak in a declarative mode. That said, the film offers a lot. The story line is that the villagers await the arrival of a woman who'd left town in her youth and is returning as a rich woman; on arrival, she promises bountiful endowment to this dying town, but on the condition that the only shopowner - the Mayor-to-be, played by DDM - be executed: He had disowned her in their youth when she became pregnant, leading to her leave the town and take up life in the city (Dakar?) as a prostitute. Faced with this choice, the people of the village turn on the shop owner and become weirdly fixated on goods and appliances and various riches - from cars to sneakers to cigarette brands. It's a story about how money corrupts (the title refers to the transformation of a community into a group of predators and carnivores), and in particular how $ corrupts politics and civic life - a theme that surely resonates today. The highlight of the film are some terrific open-air scenes show on the dusty, nearly deserted landscape - fully evocative of extreme poverty and isolation - and a terrific soundtrack start to finish.