Black Girl

I've been slowly working my way through the movies I recorded during TCM's "Black Experience on Film" spotlight that ran last September, and I think I've gotten to the last of the movies I DVRed: Black Girl, which was part of a night of movies about non-American blacks.

Directed by the Senegalese director Ousmane Sembene, the movie tells the story of Diouana (Mbissine Thérèse Diop), who at the start of the movie is getting off a plane in the south of France, having flown there from Dakar to take on her new job as maid to Monsieur (Robert Fontaine) who picked her up, and his wife Madame (Anne-Marie Jelinek). Diouana is looking forward to improving her lot in life and perhaps getting to see some of the big wide world outside of the small section of Dakar that's been her universe all her life.

But it doesn't seem to be such a happy life for Diouana. She keeps wondering, in a series of voiceovers, where the children are and when she's going to start being a nursemaid instead of a housemaid. We learn in a series of flashbacks that Diouana had worked for this family when they were stationed in Dakar doing whatever it was the husband did for a living (that's not clearly explained). In Dakar, Diouana's job was to take the kids to and from school and look after them the rest of the time; obviously, that's what she's expecting to do now that she's in France. But the kids aren't there.

One of the things I wondered why there wasn't any sort of a contract, although part of that has to do with the fact that Diouana is illiterate as are most of the people in her world back in Dakar. There's a public letter writer who obviously wrote the letter that Diouana's mother sent. Mom is none too pleased, wondering why she hasn't heard from her daughter, and no small part of that is that Monsieur and Madame are treating her rather shabbily.

Diouana responds to that treatment by becoming increasingly listless and passive-aggressive, rebelling by basically going on strike without saying it. It eventually results in, well, I won't say since that would be giving away the whole point of the story.

I found Black Girl to be a generally interesting, if uneven movie. Diouana's voiceovers give it a sort of docudrama feel, which I think works well for the movie. The cinematography stands out, both in Senegal and France. One thing I particularly enjoyed was the look at the bathroom and kitchen in the apartment in France. I've begun to think that kitchens in contemporary movies are a good way of showing the prosperity (or lack thereof) of the times. The kitchen here is tiny, even for a seeming middle-class family, and the exposed pipes are something I can't imagine seeing in any American house today.

The movie did, for me at least, have some plot holes, such as why Diouana didn't send her salary back to Africa once she finally got it. The bigger one, though surrounds the children. I'd guess they were at boarding school or something, but when Diouana does finally get to look after them, there's only one of the three! What happened to the other too.

Black Girl is available on DVD from the Criterion Collection, which means it's especially pricey for a movie this short (just under an hour). The print TCM ran was quite good, and I would guess that it's the same print on the DVD.