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Posted: Mon., Jul. 16, 2007, 5:07pm Open Roads Billo Il Grand Dahkaar (Comedy -- Italy)

By RONNIE SCHEIB

A Coproducers presentation and production. Executive producers, Marco Bonini, Jacques Lipkau Goyard. Co-producer, Youssou N'Dour. Directed by Laura Muscardin. Screenplay, Marco Bonini, Mbacke Gadji, in collaboration with Muscardin, Lucilla Schiaffino, based on a story by Bonini.

An apparently insoluble romantic impasse resolves itself into double domesticity in "Billo," Laura Muscardin's joyous tale of a Senegalese fashion designer in Rome. Muscardin, whose considerably darker AIDS drama "Days" showed an equally impressive control of layered tone, has woven a lavishly peopled tapestry that feels at home in both a Senegalese village and a Roman junkyard. Neither an illegal-immigrant horror story nor a broad culture-clash comedy, quasi-documentary pic, with extremely personable hip-hop designer Thierno Thiam as the star of his own real-life story, skips gracefully through good times and bad. Delightful comedy deserves wider exposure. Pic opens on the reflection of a campfire in Billo's (Thiam) eye. This location, a beach in Senegal, segues quickly to a beach in Italy as Billo heads to Rome to make his fortune. Through his fellow Senegalese, Billo finds work selling pirated CDs and holes up in a junked car, finally relocating to a rented room, only to be mistakenly arrested as an Islamic terrorist.

Here, as elsewhere, Muscardin deftly balances comedy and ominous, Kafkaesque absurdity, as a no-nonsense female interrogator and an overeager defense attorney let their assumptions run away with them.

Billo eventually, and opportunely, finds a job with an upholsterer; a home with Pap (Paul N'Dour), a Senegalese sanitation worker who has lived in Italy for 10 years; and friendship with a gay couple doubly named Paolo (played by Marco Bonini, who co-scripted and exec produced, and Paolo Gasparini). Billo also finds a liberating if slightly kooky wife in Paolo's lovestruck sister Laura (Susy Laude).

There's only one problem: Billo also has a fiancée back in Senegal, his cousin Fatou (Carmen De Santos), whom he has loved since childhood. Near-identical scenes in which each woman begs a packing Billo to take her with him trigger a measure of angst in Billo until his marabout reminds him of the advantages of Islam, which allows up to four wives, magically banishing all guilt and responsibility. Interspersed throughout Billo's sojourn in Italy are flashbacks to his childhood in the village of Mballing, dropped simply into his present-day existence without strain or fanfare. Fascinated by the gorgeous, vibrant colors of the fabrics his family dyes, young Billo sees his apprenticeship as a tailor as both a calling and a way to become rich enough to sway Fatou's affluent, educated parents to accept him as a suitor.

Against the rigid rituals, clear class divisions and architectural simplicity of Mballing, Muscardin opposes a ditzy Rome -- complete with family dinners where a gay son and his lover, and a daughter and her black fiancé, are greeted with chirpy joy by mama (Luisa De Santis) and with glowering silence by papa (Mario De Santis).

Tolerance is not a simple matter of hugs and indulgence in pic's unexpectedly complex moral landscape. Beneath the surface looms a thorny mass of differences to be negotiated, with women doing most of the heavy lifting. Yet the characters are sustained throughout by a sense of inner balance, continually finding their footing in a flow of events that avoids both cutesy serendipity and the inevitability that tends to plague biopics.

Tech credits on this cooperatively produced low-budgeter further pic's carefully constructed casualness. Senegalese musician and co-producer Youssou N'Dour's score adds to pic's hybrid sense of identity. plussing pic's happily hybrid ethnicity.

http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117934199.html? categoryid=31&cs=1&query=maRCO+BONINI

With documentaries on the upsurge many films now seem to be benefiting from blending flavorful fact with the structure of fiction, and Muscardin's 'Billo' ('Billo il grand Dakhaar') is another good and original example—a very watchable little film about the African immigrant experience in Italy. 'Billo's' protagonist is a young Senegalese trained as a tailor who comes to Rome to make his fortune in the world of fashion, and stars Thierno Thiam, the actual hiphop fashion designer its about (according the RAI, in real life music is his main thing and fashion more of a hobby).

Billo is just a name Thierno gave a woman outside a disco one night. As an illegal African immigrant he has entered with the deck stacked against him—but this is no downbeat tale of woe. An otherwise nice employer, an upholsterer, suspects him of attempted rape, when it was that same woman who has tried to seduce him in the store. Before that he's jailed as an Islamic terrorist when all he was doing was selling pirated CD's and DVD's. On the other hand, he's a big handsome guy and there are Italian women who want him. When he becomes friendly through his mentor and countryman Pap (Paul N'Dour) with Pap's roommates, gay couple Paolo and Paolo (Marco Bonini, Paolo Gasparini), who run a gym, he meets Paolo's sister Laura (Susy Laude), who's instantly smitten; to her friends he soon becomes "the black hunk." In some ways things go all too well, because there's a pretty girl waiting for him back home too. The way Thierno is torn between the two women dramatizes the duality of his life. He loves the freedom and opportunity of Italy socially and professionally, but he's still an African sustained by the strong values he learned in Senegal as a youth.

The film begins with striking images of fires on the African beach reflected in Theirno's eyes. Flashbacks take us back to his religious mentor or marabout (Boubacar Ba) who trains him in the Koran when he's a small boy. Then as an adolescent we see him working in a shop and going to a tailoring school. He loves a cousin named Fatou (Carmen de Santos) and she loves him. She's from a richer branch of his family and they're told to stay away from each other but they meet secretly through his youth: she becomes the pretty girl back home. Thierno's mother Diara (Daba Soumarè) is a regal and authoritative lady. When he leaves home he must perform a special ritual that means he will come back—though Diara is suspicious, because his father disappeared.

Muscardin's first feature (her second was a documentary about Roberto Rossellini's 'Rome, Open City') was 'Days' ('Giorni') about a gay couple, one of whom had HIV; it was notable for a cool eye and nifty editing. 'Billo' too is intelligently edited, notably in the interweaving of early life with adult experience, and this is enhanced by gorgeous colors. That is one way that Thierno's designs bring African energy into Rome, but the camera takes full advantage of the Senegalese women's traditional elegance. All of which is enhanced further by a choice soundtrack provided by Youssou N'Dour, who is the African co-producer. Muscardin is good at showing parent-child interaction, which has parallels here—particularly between Laura and her mother (Luisa De Santis) and Thierno and his. Interesting parallels and contrasts are also drawn between Paolo's independence as a gay person and Thierno's violation of local norms as an African Muslim. But this sounds too serious: this is above all a droll, surprising romantic comedy that also happens to be smart and clearheaded in its use of realistic material, and adept with documentary footage and non-actors. In fact Laura Muscardin seems to be as smart and clearheaded and fresh in her outlook and adept in her methods as any of the younger Italian directors today.

Shown as part of the Open Roads: New Italian Cinema series at Lincoln Center June 2007.