Necessarily distressing: Terrence Turner's play about female genital mutilation makes for an incredibly difficult watch.
Babe is barely five years and she's already wise to gender inequality: she's determined to make her future husband carry their babies, and wants to play outside like the boys can. Dishonour uses this as the foundation to talk about far darker inequalities, namely female genital mutilation (FGM) and how it affects families across the UK.
Mimi Ndiwemi has complete mastery of the stage, moving fluidly between Babe and a host of supporting figures including her father Francis and traditionalist Auntie. Olaf Strassner's cinematography highlights Ndiwemi with a minimalist background and simple, stark lighting, allowing nothing to distract from her layered performance.
Auntie verges on caricature, with her hunched back and scowling mien. It's easy to leave her in this distorted idea of reality as the film's villain but rather Ndiwemi evolves her into a far more realistic antagonist. There's a fear and frailty to her scheme, some sense of shame under her assertion that a traumatic event could be a rite of passage for girls and young women.
"We're often privy to rehashed lines from the preceding scene...this slows the overall momentum of the piece."
Turner's script sets in motion a series of events which feel sickeningly inevitable as the film progresses, though the writing suffers from some repetitive dialogue. By seeing all elements of Francis' home life and actions, we are often privy to rehashed lines as he discusses with Auntie a conversation with Babe from the preceding scene. This slows the overall momentum of the piece and assumes an ignorance of the audience which clearly isn't Turner's intention, as the show's conclusion feels thinly veiled in innuendo.
The final scene isn't hard to guess, but nonetheless is an extremely distressing sequence to watch. The choice to fade to black before the dialogue ends is particularly hard-hitting, giving the film a harrowing lack of hope despite an earlier scene attempting to contextualise the moves made to combat FGM. Here, we're met with harsh reality.
Dishonour is available to watch on demand until 30th August, find out more and buy tickets here.