Bright fabrics interweave with misfortune in this tale of make-do and resilience. Taking the measurements of life in Cameroon with the instruments of fiction for the first time, Rosine Mbakam meshes the truth and amity of her empathetically crafted documentaries into poignant narrative cinema.

Finding unique formal constraints in the mirrored confines of the titular salon, Chez Jolie Coiffure brushes through the rhythms of hairdressing: from speedy dexterity to sporadic lulls. Observing—but catching up with her charismatic subject too—Rosine Mbakam detangles the social life of the trade.

In intricate dialogue with the present, Rosine Mbakam’s debut feature also joins hands with the past, feeling for traces of old rituals and lost souls. Over bowls of peeled cassava and pots of blackened fish, the Belgian-Cameroonian director honors the feminine labor that holds communities together.

Rosine Mbakam’s most intimate documentary is formed exclusively from conversations between the filmmaker and her impassioned subject. With laughter and defiance, Delphine undoes her languorous bedroom pose of its art-historical, odalisque connotations, sharing secrets of faith, compromise, and love.