Neptune Frost
**Seen at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.
“Neptune Frost” is message wrapped in genre. The genre it inhabits is Afrofuturism, which is probably best defined by Ytasha L. Womack as “an intersection of imagination, technology, the future and liberation.” It also is part musical and part romance and part techo-thriller. That’s a big meal to take in, and I’m glad that I did, even if I wasn’t quite sure what I thought of it right away. What I will say is, you were unlikely to see anything else like it at Sundance this year.
The film is the work of Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman. Williams might be a familiar name to filmgoers- a rapper, a poet a musician and an actor, he first came to prominence onscreen in 1998’s “Slam,” and in 2021, he was in a terrific thriller called “Akilla’s Escape.” Here, he is completely behind-the-scenes, as the writer and co-director of “Neptune Frost,” as well as writing much of the music in the film. Shot in Rwanda, “Neptune Frost” is very authentic in its ideas, as well as the tactile nature of its images (shot by Uzeyman).
We begin at the funeral of the aunt of our narrator, Neptune (Elvis Ngabo and Cheryl Isheja). Neptune is intersex, but has spent their first two decades of life as a boy. We get the impression that their aunt always knew who they were, and now, they feel it necessary to finally live their authentic life. That two actors play Neptune might make it confusing, but the connection Neptune makes with Matalusa (Kaya Free), a coltan miner who begins a chant of revolution against the company the miners work for when his brother dies, is not, and it helps spark a digital revolution among a hacker collective. I feel like that only covers a portion of what this movie is about, but just in that description, you can see the ideas of anti-colonialism, labor (and land) exploitation, and gender identity take hold.
The music in this film is, quite frankly, the most exciting aspect of it. The drums providing the beat for the coltan miners after Mata’s brother’s death. The chant that takes hold (“These Motherfuckers Don’t Want to Back Down”) is simple but powerful. A dreamlike sequence contains a song that connects the natural to the technical in an evocative, beautiful way. The songs the collective sing have force and energy to them. This is a soundtrack I would love to just dig in to and let immerse me, and let me remember the images. I’ll need another pass through the film to really dig in to it narratively. I definitely won’t say no if the opportunity arises.
**There were technical issues that sullied my Sundance screening. I was able to rewatch it via screener after the festival. Removed from everything happening during the original screening, I found it an engaging and compelling film. The narrative is easy-flowing, and the themes and ideas come together well. The images and the music are still the highlights for me, but the experience of “Neptune Frost” was more satisfying to what Uzeyman and Williams were intending to do.
