Black and White in Color

It would be difficult to imagine how this supposedly liberal satire on colonialism and racism could be more offensive. Set in the Ivory Coast French colony of 1915, it concentrates on the disruption caused to a sleepy French community by the belated news of the outbreak of World War I. Pricking the pretensions of characters stirred by patriotism as they mobilise the natives into battle against the neighbouring German community, writer/director Annaud unfortunately also manages to reinforce some of the worst racist and sexist stereotypes (funny, gullible niggers; giggly, busty women), and couch the whole thing in a broad, farcical style of comic acting familiar from the French cinema of the '30s.