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Black Girl, 1966
Diouana (Mbissine Therese Diop) is hired in her native Dakar, Senegal as a nanny by a wealthy French couple (Anne-Marie Jelinek and Robert Fontaine). When the couple asks Diouana if she will accompany them back to France, she is more than eager. But once they arrive in France, Diouana is treated as a servant, becoming more isolated and depressed as each day goes on.
There is something really delightful and powerful about a film that is seemingly able to say exactly what it wants with poise and efficiency, and Black Girl, for me, is just such a film.
When I was a teenager, there was a local family who were arrested for having kept a young woman for Africa as essentially a slave in their home. Much like this film, they expected her to keep up the house, and that providing her with food and some hand-me-down clothing was all the payment she should expect. I think that this film does an excellent job of showing the way that certain practices, while not literal slavery, echo and enforce the more violent past of slavery and colonialism.
Diop, in the lead role, does a heartbreakingly good job of showing a young person who, through isolation and insult, slowly begins to shut down. In every day of her life in France she is treated as lesser than. She is insulted and treated with contempt. She is never thanked or praised except for the purpose of show when guests come around. Diouana is also baffled to realize that the couple hasn't even brought their children immediately, wondering who she's meant to be caring for.
But the really brilliant flip side of this is the portrayal of Diouana's employers, and especially the wife. You can see, written between the lines, the narrative that they have constructed in their heads of this ungrateful, uncultured woman. It doesn't take long for the wife's treatment of Diouana to start to slide into physical abuse and confrontation. Again, nothing so direct or severe as a beating, but a slap on the leg, throwing shoes down at her feet, or pulling the covers off of her when she is sleeping. Diouana's labor becomes something that the couple takes for granted, and they become angry and unkind if they have to do something as simple as making a pot of coffee or pouring a bowl of cereal. It becomes apparent later in the film that they have not paid Diouana what she is owed.
One of the standout sequences occurs when Diouana receives a letter from her mother, demanding money. Diouana passionlessly declares that someone else has written this letter for her mother. And even as she thinks this, the couple begins to pen a letter as if they were Diouana, putting their own words on the page and simply cueing Diouana to speak up if she wants to change the wording.
The film also has several notable, allegorical sequences with an African mask that Diouana initially gives her employers as a gift.
I thought that this film was pretty perfect. At right around an hour I could see this slipping under the radar as not being long enough to be a "real" film, and yet running a bit long for a "short". If you have the Criterion Channel or another way to watch it I'd highly recommend it.
Black Girl, 1966
Diouana (Mbissine Therese Diop) is hired in her native Dakar, Senegal as a nanny by a wealthy French couple (Anne-Marie Jelinek and Robert Fontaine). When the couple asks Diouana if she will accompany them back to France, she is more than eager. But once they arrive in France, Diouana is treated as a servant, becoming more isolated and depressed as each day goes on.
There is something really delightful and powerful about a film that is seemingly able to say exactly what it wants with poise and efficiency, and Black Girl, for me, is just such a film.
When I was a teenager, there was a local family who were arrested for having kept a young woman for Africa as essentially a slave in their home. Much like this film, they expected her to keep up the house, and that providing her with food and some hand-me-down clothing was all the payment she should expect. I think that this film does an excellent job of showing the way that certain practices, while not literal slavery, echo and enforce the more violent past of slavery and colonialism.
Diop, in the lead role, does a heartbreakingly good job of showing a young person who, through isolation and insult, slowly begins to shut down. In every day of her life in France she is treated as lesser than. She is insulted and treated with contempt. She is never thanked or praised except for the purpose of show when guests come around. Diouana is also baffled to realize that the couple hasn't even brought their children immediately, wondering who she's meant to be caring for.
But the really brilliant flip side of this is the portrayal of Diouana's employers, and especially the wife. You can see, written between the lines, the narrative that they have constructed in their heads of this ungrateful, uncultured woman. It doesn't take long for the wife's treatment of Diouana to start to slide into physical abuse and confrontation. Again, nothing so direct or severe as a beating, but a slap on the leg, throwing shoes down at her feet, or pulling the covers off of her when she is sleeping. Diouana's labor becomes something that the couple takes for granted, and they become angry and unkind if they have to do something as simple as making a pot of coffee or pouring a bowl of cereal. It becomes apparent later in the film that they have not paid Diouana what she is owed.
One of the standout sequences occurs when Diouana receives a letter from her mother, demanding money. Diouana passionlessly declares that someone else has written this letter for her mother. And even as she thinks this, the couple begins to pen a letter as if they were Diouana, putting their own words on the page and simply cueing Diouana to speak up if she wants to change the wording.
The film also has several notable, allegorical sequences with an African mask that Diouana initially gives her employers as a gift.
I thought that this film was pretty perfect. At right around an hour I could see this slipping under the radar as not being long enough to be a "real" film, and yet running a bit long for a "short". If you have the Criterion Channel or another way to watch it I'd highly recommend it.