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Shirley Adams: a woman’s hymn to love to her only son…

           “If the sky should fall into the sea
And the stars fade all around me
All the times that we have known here
I will sing a hymn to love…” once sang the ever-famous French singer Édith Piaf as a tribute to her beloved Marcel Cerdan.

            More than sixty years later, these brilliant lyrics have not dated in the slightest and to this day reflect a disconcerting modernity. Indeed, they still perfectly manage to articulate the utter confusion in which one finds oneself, when confronted with the loss of a loved one – in fact the very dismay in which the eponymous character, Shirley Adams, played by a powerhouse Denise Newman, finds herself throughout Oliver Hermanus’s film screened yesterday evening upon the Opening Ceremony of the Festival’s 31^st edition.

             To be frank, having just read the synopsis of the film on the catalogue, I did not really know what to expect – I even remember catching myself thinking, on my way to the venue, the Grand T, that at least I had nothing to lose since the film-director, who was one of the very special guests of this very special evening, was rather cute…

             Joking apart, I was hooked by this film right from the start. Set against the backdrop of violence and poverty of Mitchell’s Plain – a largely colourful township located about 20 kilometers from the City of Cape Town – Shirley Adams tells the story of a woman who, as in Tennyson’s poetry, is powerful yet powerless. Indeed, she spends her day taking care of her only son Donovan who, after being hit by a stray bullet during a gang shootout, has been left paralyzed from the waist down.

             Estranged by her husband, already struggling to make ends meet in the harsh Cape Flats district, she is faced with her son’s feeling of self-loathing – a very destructive feeling that even the deepest love of a mother cannot prevent.

             What a film to open this 31^st edition of the Festival of 3 Continents: yesterday’s Ceremony was nothing less than a real hymn to love of a major Festival to its ever-growing audience.

Marie-Agnès Lachèze