Olivier Marceny/Cinéfrance Studios/Archipel 35/Dune Vision
MOVIE REVIEW
Black Tea (2024)
What “Black Tea” should have been is an exploration of how an Ivorian woman is able to be herself only once she leaves home. But instead “Black Tea” is an interesting failure about the limits of the masculine imagination. It’s also a demonstration of the importance of structural consistency if you want an audience to stay with your characters. This is such a shame, because director Abderrahmane Sissako, who also cowrote the script, has a reputation for attentive movies about how people’s lives are shaped by global forces outside their control. But based on this movie, unfortunately he is also only a man. It’s really irritating when a movie misses its own point.