What Makes Quim Run? (1991)

There's a moment watching What Makes Quim Run? where you genuinely forget what year it was made. The grain on the image, the way the camera moves, the whole texture of the thing, it all feels like something that was pulled from a 1950s archive rather than shot in the early nineties. And honestly? That worked for me. There's a gritty, unpolished charm to it that I wasn't expecting to warm to, but I did. It has a kind of accidental atmosphere that more self-conscious filmmakers spend entire careers trying and failing to manufacture.

Set against a backdrop of post-colonial Angola, the film deals with a fighter pilot, war trauma, and family secrets. That subject matter alone makes it worth tracking down if you're interested in Angolan cinema or the history of the region. Films from this corner of the world don't turn up on many people's radars, and there's genuine value in watching one that's at least attempting to wrestle with the psychological aftermath of conflict and the weight of the past. For a low-budget production, it's also more competently put together than you might expect: the acting is solid, the pacing holds its shape, and you can feel real heart behind the project. People cared about making this. That counts for something.

But I'd be doing you a disservice if I left it there, because the film has a serious problem sitting right at its centre, and I can't look past it.

The story hinges on the protagonist fathering a child born with a physical difference, two heads, and the film's response to this is to have every character around her treat her as a freak. She's called a "creature." A "monster." Her existence is framed as something shameful, something that breaks her father and drives him away from home and into the arms of his mistress. There's no dignity afforded to her. No humanity. She's used as a plot device, a symbol of wrongness, and the film doesn't seem to question that framing for a second.

That's not just dated thinking. It's genuinely hurtful. And what makes it more frustrating is that it's completely unnecessary. The story they're telling, about guilt and escape and the wreckage men leave behind, didn't require this. They could have made the same film without using a disabled child as shorthand for a man's trauma. The fact that they didn't even try is a real problem, and it drags the whole thing down in a way that's hard to shake off.

I think about films like Sugar Cane Alley, which handles the bruising weight of post-colonial life with genuine care and intelligence, and the contrast is stark. That film trusts its audience. What Makes Quim Run? takes a shortcut that crosses a line.

So where does that leave me? Torn, honestly. Technically, this is interesting. Culturally, it's a curiosity. There are stretches that are genuinely compelling, and I'd be lying if I said the visual style didn't get under my skin in the best possible way. But it's weighed down by a premise that handles disability in a way that's dehumanising, and I can't separate that from my overall feeling about the film. You shouldn't be able to, either.

Worth a single watch if you're going down a rabbit hole of African cinema from this era, and I'd encourage that kind of curiosity. But go in with your eyes open and your side-eye fully loaded. Two stars.

Rating: ★★  | Year: 1991  | Watched: 2025-05-23

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More from the 1990s: Lessons of Darkness (1992) · Shinjuku Boys (1995) · Blue (1993) · Cemetery Man (1994)
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