|
The "domestic slavery" of post-colonial anguish, conte d'une jeune négresse. She (Mbissine Thérèse Diop) is clearly seen alive to her friends and family in Dakar, in the Riviera apartment she's boxed-in and soul-sick, a continuous disintegration. The process begins back home in "the maids' square," where local girls wait by the sidewalk to be surveyed by pinched tourists wearing insectoid sunglasses; overjoyed at being chosen, she sees her dreams of continental lushness wither as the original babysitting gig grows into a full-time stint as maid, cook and all-around exotic trophy. Ousmane Sembene in his feature debut has the stark anecdote, recounted with forthright intimacy and lucid anger. (His cameo is as public scribe, eagle-eyed with corncob pipe.) France is a hectic wharf plus the sterile walls of the bourgeois abode, outside is a ghost town. She adorns herself with necklaces and earrings while mopping the floor, curt and callous Madame (Anne-Marie Jelinek) hands her an apron, "you're not going to a party!" Dark skin against pale sheets and tiled panels, the sharpest and most draining interiors before Akerman's in Jeanne Dielman. All the while, flashbacks give the bounce and bustle of Senegal only six years out of European bondage—a trio of garrulous businessmen strolling down the street, political posters and glossy magazines at the beau's flat, women regal as queens going about their day. Plinking nouvelle vague pianos, condescending dinner chatter ("With independence, the natives have lost a natural quality"), above all the plaintive fury of the protagonist's voiceover, finally silenced as she slumps into a pearly bathtub with bloodied razor in hand. In the devastating epilogue, Sembene seizes the Senghor mask not for reconciliation but for confrontation: Monsieur (Robert Fontaine) guiltily shoves money at the heroine's mother and gets chased away by the staring kanaga, which is removed for the camera to reveal the young hope of the ancient continent. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |