Kini & Adams, 93 minutes, Colour, Director Idrissa Ouedraogo, France/UK Next showing tonight at 8.45 p.m. Liberty Theatre.

`Kini & Adams' is an African film about friendship and responsibility. Kini (Vusi Kunene) is the responsible one, who has a wife and child. Adams (David Mohloki) is the friend your mother always told you to beware of. Yet the two are bound by the desire to escape rural poverty and move to the big city.

Together they have worked for the past five years on rebuilding a broken down old car, their way out.

The friendship and the dream comes under pressure when the local quarry is restarted and the two find jobs. Kini soon gets promoted when he is taken under the wing of his supervisor Ben (John Kani).

The plot hinges on a comedy of errors -- everyone except Kini and his stalwart wife Aida seems to lie about relationships, or have ulterior motives for their friendships. Ben wants to turn Kini into a drunk to estrange him from Aida (Nthati Moshesh). Ben seems to be attracted to Aida. Adams wants to drive Kini and Aida apart so Kini can leave her and finally go to the city with him.

Adams' friendship in particular turns into one in which he does not have Kini's best interests at heart.

The turning point comes when Aida tells Kini: "You've changed, Kini. You cheat. You drink. You lie.'' From then on his marriage goes downhill and Kini must make the choice between his family and the city, not an unfamiliar theme to many Africans.

The acting is well done. Mr. Kunene has appeared in `Cry the Beloved Country' and `The Air Up There'. Mr. Mohloki has worked extensively in South African television and has appeared in `Unseen Enemy', and `Diana'.

`Kini & Adams' is Mr. Ouedraogo's sixth feature film and his first in English.

He previously worked in French, the language of his native land Burkina Faso.

His 1989 film `Yaaba', which told of the friendship between a boy and an old woman, took the International Critics' Prize at Cannes that year.

The English does make this movie more accessible. I saw `Yabba' at the Montreal Film Festival that year and remember being distracted from the film by having to read the subtitles. But that was true of all the films at the festival.

The English also takes something away from the actors' performances, making them appear a bit wooden, although as most of them are South Africans they are used to filming in English. It's however a bit jarring to listen to Adams' good-time girlfriend Binja (Netsayi Chigwendere) who speaks with a perfect British accent.

One can understand the dilemma facing the director. The funders convinced him that the use of English would make the film more commercially viable, and give him a greater range of actors to chose from. Mr. Ouedraogo is looking to push his career in the industry further, and no-one can fault him for that ambition.

He has also inserted a lot of jokes about urinating and bowel movements which may strike Western audiences as a bit childish in the context of a serious subject matter. But Mr. Ouedraogo originally meant for the film to be screened in the villages of Burkino Faso. His vision soon expanded as French funders began to back the venture.

Look at the jokes as a means of keeping a rural viewer interested, in much the same way as Shakespeare played to the gallery by inserting similar jokes and slapstick scenes into his plays. However since Mr. Ouedraogo filmed in English, with French subtitles, he has left his original rural audience behind.

Mr. Ouedraogo has done an excellent job of directing and the visual scenes are ably done. This is the work of a professional growing with his chosen medium and is certainly one of the best films showing at the festival. This can be viewed as a transitional film for him, one in which he struggles to appeal to both African and Western audiences.

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