La noire de...

Senegalese auteur Ousmane Sembene's feature debut, engraved in the film history as the first Sub-Saharan African feature film made by an African filmmaker. But the "very first"tag doesn't necessarily guarantee a masterpiece for its own sake, BLACK GIRL, recently restored to its original transfer with vintage graininess and monochrome sheen, running approximately 60 minutes, has been rammed down audience's throat more like an ardent manifesto than an artistic adventure.

Diouana (Diop) is a young Senegalese girl, has been working for a French couple as their child- minder in Dakar, when the couple is transferred to Antibes, they intend to continue hiring her, offers her a one-way ticket to Antibes living with them. Thrilled by the opportunity to come to France, Diouana arrives with high hopes, like any girl in her age, pining for a new life in a developed country, breathing the fresh air of the Western civilization and seeing a world beyond her imagination, only all turns out to be a dashed dream.

Upon arrival, Diouana surprisingly finds out that the couple's kids are not there, instead, she is requested to work as a maid, cooking, cleaning and all other trappings. As days go by, we are guided by Diouana's inner voice, she becomes increasingly disillusioned with misgivings, questions and reminiscences of her life in Dakar, eventually she realizes that she has been cheated and exploited, living like a prisoner in the apartment, France to her merely means her tiny bedroom and the kitchen, what is worse that she is illiterate, therefore she cannot even express her true feelings in letters to her mother in Dakar. What can she do enmeshed in such dire circumstances? Diouana plumps for the most radical way to lay bare her protest, ire and accusation against the stuck-up madame (Jelinek, a force of unapologetic monstrosity) and the aloof monsieur (a grotesquely- looking Fontaine), it is as searing as startling, she has other alternatives, but in Sembene's ideology, perhaps, this is the best tack to provoke a rude awakening.

Ultimately the film serves as Sembene's fervent anti-colonialism diatribe, a symbolic indigenous wooden mask relentlessly haunts the guilty party, where the poverty-stricken country holds its dignity in a defiant way, BLACK GIRL, also benefits from its unruffled frame compositions, marks the dawn of African cinema which finally finds its voice to speak volumes about the cinema- eschewing continent's own story, history and ethos, for that particular reason, Sembene's debut can promisingly function as a stepping stone and find its niche in a hallowed recess.

This Senegalese film is very important. It's a film made by black filmmakers and espouses a very strong black nationalist attitude. Because of this, it must have really struck a chord for African film patrons.

"Black Girl" is a film about a young woman from Senegal that has taken a job working for a white French family. She thinks she was hired to take care of the children but the woman of the house sees Diouana as a personal servant and soon this young lady finds herself working as a maid--and an under-appreciated on at that. Part of the problem is a communication barrier between the white family and Diouana as often neither quite understands the other's expectations. Part of it is the wife is rather cold and sees the Africans as being dumb and beneath her. Where does all this end up? Well, in a sad way it's a giant 'I'm not gonna take it any more' from Diouana--much like the attitude through the continent towards their colonial or former colonial masters.

While this is a very important film and it would be great to use in a class about African cinema or world history, technically speaking it has a few small shortcomings. It's not the smoothest or highest quality production--but considering its humble roots, I can easily look past that and it's still worth seeing if you are patient and can appreciate the context for when it was made (such as the Patrice Lumumba banner briefly seen in a tiny portion of the film).

Black Girl presents an allegory for European colonialism in Africa through the lens of a Senegalese woman who secures a job in France. Sembene makes careful directorial choices to emphasize the contrasts between Senegal and France and the divide between Diouana's expectations for France and the reality. One of these choices is the use of nonlinear time - the film opens with her arrival in France and shows her interactions with Madame, then goes back in time to when she secured the job in Senegal. The striking difference between these two times is Diouana's attitude. In Senegal, when she is offered the job she is overjoyed at the opportunity, especially since it involves taking care of kids. However, when she gets there, she doesn't see the kids, is told to do all the work around the house, and is berated by Madame for being lazy. Seeing Diouana's frustrating situation is more resonant in only realizing afterwards how excited she was for the job going in. Her body language is a world apart, as in France she never smiles and has no energy but in Senegal was beaming when she got the job, and was so excited to see what France was like. I also like Sembene's choice to have her inner monologue as narration, as that further serves to put the audience inside Diouana's head. Her perspective is essential to understanding the way she is completely devastated by her experience, and from the first scenes of the film we are put in her point of view as we look out the window onto France through her eyes. Madame presented it as a great opportunity for her to make money and do what she enjoys - be with children - but then doesn't give her what she promised and by the time she does, her condescension and demands have sucked all the life from Diouana. You can interpret the symbolism of the film in many ways, and mine may change, but my impression now is that the film symbolizes the way Europe seemed to offer to help African countries but really just exploited them for all their resources, denied them the opportunity promised to give the next generation a better life, and then saw it as a surprising, random, unfortunate event when the countries are even worse off. The exploitation element is made explicit by Diouana's narration at the end, where she talks about being done being a slave. The mask is another interesting symbol in the film, one of African culture. We see how Diouana shares it with the family initially but they then appropriate it and treat it as their own, and at the end of the film Monsieur is haunted by it as the legacy of his sins. Really smart and well layered, and with a poignant ending, Black Girl is an excellent allegory.

On the one hand, 'Black Girl' is a very personal film about a young Senegalese girl who goes to France to escape her poverty stricken life in Senegal. But on the other hand, 'Black Girl' is also an immensely political film which tackles racism head on. This is a film which is narrow in terms of focus, but extremely broad in terms of its ambitions with its social and political relevance.

Sembène uses a non-linear screenplay structure and jumps back and forth between Diouana's present life in France and her past life in French occupied Senegal. Through the flashback sequences, we get to see how she took it upon herself to turn her back on the racism and the oppression that characterised her life in Senegal and move to the new land. But unfortunately moving to France for her ends up being nothing other than a journey from one prison to another. She becomes literally and figuratively imprisoned in the house of her employers. The mistress of the house tricks her into doing far more work around the house than she signed up for. The confinement and the complete disintegration of the dreams she had of the life she'd get to live in France gradually make her lose her spirit and her faith. This film underlines the notion that the poisons of oppression and racism with their roots in regressive imperialism have much more to do with mentality than geography.

As I have mentioned Sembène does a very good job of balancing the personal with the political/social. Although the film is very Diouana-centric, the social and political relevance is always the elephant in the room lurking around in the corner and Sembène will from time to time overtly allow the politics to move from the background to the foreground, for example there is a moment when three distinguish-ably dressed Senegalese men are shown to have a conversation about civil rights and the current political scene as Diouana walks past them. It is a scene that serves no purpose in the basic narrative of the film, but it serves a thematic purpose considering the political backdrop of the film. Although the film as a whole paints a bit of grim picture of the life of Senegalese and African people in a world still not completely beyond the grips of an imperialist attitude, Sembène still manages to end the film on a beautiful note for the future generations of Senegal. The ending sequence seamlessly blends the ideas of imperial guilt of Europeans and optimism with regards to reclamation of their rightful political power by the Senegalese people in the future.

'Black Girl' directly tackles racism and does so in a very uninhibited manner and it deserves all the praise for its intentions and its message. However, even though I admire the film for the nobility of its intentions, from a technical and storytelling standpoint, I do think it is a bit flawed. First of all the way Sembène uses the voice-over narration here really reminded me of Bresson's use of the same in the way that it is used for overtly expository purposes which always ends up leaving me a bit irritated and honestly the voice-over in many of the scenes in which it is used seems redundant. The best scenes in the film are the wordless ones when Sembène dwells on an image to evoke an emotion instead of Diouana explaining everything. Another flaw in the film is the quality of the acting. The acting gets a little too amateurish at times which prevents some scenes to have the most optimum emotional impact.

'Black Girl' deserves to be seen because of its political and social importance and relevance in Senegalese history and how it influenced the growth of personal, independent cinema in Africa. I don't think it is a flawless, perfect film, but I can't help but admire the themes, the intentions and the potency of its message.

On the injustices one culture can do to another. The film is about an African woman who gets a job with a white family and agrees to follow them back to France, only to be disenheartened in the end. While, the production values were not great, the messages of this film are stronger than most major US motion pictures. The characters (especially the French) do seem to be a bit shallow, and don't have much depth to them. Yet, the theme of loneliness from displacement and cultural injustice ring powerfully loud in the end. An 8 out of 10.