“F.V.V.A.” stands for femme, voiture, villa, argent, or ”wife, car, house, money,” the attributes necessary to show you’ve got it made in Niger’s nascent professional class circa 1972. The film begins as a touching portrait of a pair of urban newlyweds (perhaps the city cousins to the rural young lovers of Aoure) before switching into cautionary mode, as the two are caught between Niger’s persistent underdevelopment and the inflated expectations of modern consumerism. Alassane’s retreat from feature filmmaking after F.V.V.A. and Toula signaled also a retreat from social critique at a time when his prominent status could have made such gestures dangerous.