Bon Voyage

Despite being set in Paris and entirely revolving around a black African woman speaking only in French this is in fact a Scottish film since it was commissioned by The Scottish Executive and produced by the Scottish film company Scottish Screen . the Scottish executive are very good at giving taxpayers money to companies to produce adverts and the like pointing out that we're all the same colour under the skin , that diversity is a good thing and that we need immigrants . BON VOYAGE continues this trend . It's never explained why this African woman left her home in Africa and we learn very little about her and as Bob pointed out the real life African woman just sounds like a wooden actress reading lines from a script . Perhaps the most unforgivable thing is that she states in Africa they have a " joie de vivre " which is a useless bit of information if you don't know any French . No doubt the executive and Scottish Screen thought they were doing the world an almighty favour by financing and producing this but as a piece of documentary for a neutral audience it falls far short

I'm assuming that most people (in the UK, at least), saw the English language version of this film that was broadcast on UK TV (Channel 4). In which case some of the other comments posted here are pretty astute - especially those referring to the voice-over as sounding 'like an actress reading from a script' and 'not speaking from the heart as a real person'.

Well ... I produced this film and so I'm happy to shed some light on this here. In the English- speaking version, it WAS an actress and this WAS a flaw ... but the words were not scripted. In the original French language/English subtitled version, the words were spoken by the very real woman you see on screen ... they were all her own words and it is a far, far more powerful piece because of it. Unfortunately, the broadcaster was not happy about transmitting a subtitled version so we had to draft in an actress at the last minute to dub the dialogue ... a fact that neither I nor, I can assure you, the director, Kapwani Kiwanga, were in any way happy about.

The French/subtitled version has since had a life of its own playing in festivals around the world and has even won the Venus De Badelona award for Best Documentary in Barcelona in 2005. It will also be screened on Canadian TV this year (2006) in its original version. If anyone reading here has seen the dubbed version and would like to see a version of the film as the filmmaker intended then I would be happy to send you a DVD if you send me your address.

An African woman who now works and lives in Paris, relates her feelings and experiences in her new city. Or at least, that is what she tries to do as the camera watches her in her basic job. Her voice-over is interesting but it never gets personal, she never made me believe that she was speaking from the heart as a real person and came over almost like a bad actress reading her lines verbatim. It is a shame because some of what she said suggested it would have been good to hear more but the film never lets her do it and ends almost as soon as she's opened her mouth. I got the feeling that the film was basically wanting to say "life's not all roses for immigrants you know" but was happy to say it in bullet points without letting the person speak herself. A shame and a real missed opportunity.