Some Thoughts on The Importance of Being Elegant

The “Importance of Being Elegant” is a film by directors George Amponsah & Cosima Spender. It sheds a light (too little I think) on the Congolese SAPE (Société Ambianceurs et Persons Élégants) scene in Paris and Brussels. The narrative centers around Papa Wemba, widely considered Sapeur #1. He has just been released from prison on human trafficking charges. Among other things in this cinema verite style documentary, Papa Wemba is rehearsing for an upcoming show and laying tracks for a new CD. It also turns out that he has found religion while in prison, so this is a transitional time for Papa Wemba, who wrestles with how to marry his new spiritual side with the worship of “the cloth” that is the hallmark of La Sape. He struggles with how to keep his central position of power in the expat Congolese community, but also take them in a new direction. This leads to some pretty hilarious situations. In one he is laughably decrying materialism; in another he is in a high end (Cavalli?) boutique justifying to another Sapeur the wisdom of spending 15,000 euros on one article of clothing. 

The film has some brilliant footage of Papa Wemba in rehearsal (that voice!). Those of a certain age will remember vinyl 45s of Congolese rumba available in Nairobi that contained one song pressed on two sides. The first side (Part 1) had the emotive, mellow side, and while I know zero Lingala the emotion conveyed by the singing was of sadness, longing, loss. Part 2 was the upbeat guitar-driven side; basically ”life sucks, whatever. Let’s dance!”. This contradiction, a willingness to live with the fact that this moment contains both sad and happy together forms the genius of rumba and informs the world view of Sapeurs, it seems to me. If you are from a place like Congo, where there is little hope for the future, why not live like all your dreams have come true, like there is no tomorrow?

La Sape has always been about escape even for the now old gentlemen in Congo Brazzaville where this all started in the 1940s. The young men in the film have bought into that escape fantasy to propel themselves from the poverty and war of Kinshasa to a life of luxury and elegance in Paris. In the final scenes when the filmmakers follow a sapeur nicknamed “the Archbishop” as he attempts to establish himself in Paris and in the SAPE scene there, we get a peek into the harsh realities awaiting these young men when they arrive, including a realization that it is all just a mirage.

One can tie a thread through two other NYAFF films I saw: “Killer Necklace” and “Area Boys”; through “Tsotsi” and “City of God” earlier. All these stories dramatize the effects of the developing world’s near complete failure to provide for its youth who can’t make a living, a life in the cities they grow up in. These young men become “area boys”, “tsotsis”, “sapeurs”, “pantsulas”, and other urban fringe subcultures created in the search to find meaning in life. Those who are lucky and can leave wind up living on the fringe of cities like Brussels, Paris, London, New York City, hawking knock-off merchandise, driving cabs and cleaning toilets, while avoiding deportation. Those who are left behind and who lose hope fuel the crime in Nairobi, Lagos, Johannesburg, and war in Congo, Sierra Leone, Somalia.

In the end, TIOBE is a lost opportunity. It is really an immigration story masquerading as a fashion story, a superficially narrated fashion story at that. In Q&A after the NY African Film Festival showing recently, director George Amponsah mentioned that they didn’t visit Kinshasa while filming and noted that Papa Wemba thought he was depicted as a gangster after seeing edited footage. It seems to me the director chose to caricature the Sapeur scene as a way of finding a strong narrative arc and to make the film accessible to non-African audiences. That way it was not necessary to explore any of the contradictions thrown up by Papa Wemba and the Sapeur culture. I was a little miffed that some people, unaware of the history of Congo in general and of La Sape in particular, probably walked out of that showing thinking “What losers! Spending 15,000 euros on a jacket while living in a hostel and running from la migra, wtf?!!”. To someone like me who grew up in Africa where music and pop culture was so driven by men like Papa Wemba, Franco and Tabu Ley, it is an injustice to reduce all that to just a buffoonish worship of clothes.