[lang_en]dir. Ousmane Sembene | France/Senegal | 1966 | 59 mins | French w. optional English sub

It is in Sembene’s earlier work, La Noire de . . . (The Black Girl from . . .) [1965], that we find the sharpest criticism of the motif of France as playground. The title itself is ironic, setting out to reveal and then not revealing the name of the place the girl came from. Like Josephine Baker playing a Martiniquan from Haı¨ti, the implication is that it does not matter where the girl is from; all the African countries are alike. She is also rendered anonymous. Sembene himself makes the point that ‘‘This black woman no longer has a name. Once she left her country, she lost her identity. She became somebody’s black maid’’ [quoted in Pfaff 1984: 120].

The film features a young Senegalese maid who wants to go to France. It is, in essence, a simple story, told around a stark fait divers (news short) that appeared in the French press on the Coˆ te d’Azur: ‘‘Une jeune ne´gresse se tranche la gorge dans la salle de bains de ses patrons’’ (A young black girl slits her throat in her employers’ bathroom). Diouana longs to work for a white family and one day her dream comes true. She is brought to France with the family and lives with them in their apartment in Antibes, where she is virtually a slave. She is overworked, underpaid, humiliated, and finally succumbs to this abusive treatment by killing herself. To this extent, the film is little more than an animation of the newspaper headline.

It is in the contrasting visual images and unexplained details that the real subversion lies. As she runs giddily around her mother, after she has landed the treasured job, Diouana cries repeatedly ‘‘J’ai du travail chez les Blancs’’ (I’ve got a job in a white house). Her mother, in a scene which could be used as an establishing shot for ‘‘life in an African village,’’ is carrying water on her head. Sembene appears to be observing the conventions; the mother represents traditional village values, the daughter has capitulated to the demands of modernity and its ruling tenet: ‘‘everyone would rather be in Paris.’’ But Diouana is wearing a mask. The origin of this mask remains obscure throughout the film. Diouana’s little brother is first discovered holding it; its original function is not revealed. But the act of putting it on her own face as Diouana whirls around her mother in triumph gives it new meaning. She has the coveted job, but her joy is masked, her voice muffled.

‘‘Ma me`re jeta le masque’’ (my mother threw down the mask), Diouana tells us in voice-over, and she is forced to show her face. The mother rejects the good news, implying that her daughter is deluded in her vision of France as Paradise. Later Diouana informs her boyfriend that her employers are taking her overseas with them, ‘‘en France, en France’’ (to France, to France) she repeats, hopping with excitement in a scene that parallels the earlier one with her mother. We remember the mask, and we know that France will not prove to be a Paradise, or even a place where Diouana can express herself freely. The mask, which, if still imbued with its own traditions, might have provided a sense of history and pride, is presented to the new white employers as a gift and thus becomes a mere tourist object. Like Diouana, it travels to France with the white family. But they already have so many trophies of Africa that there is scarcely room on the wall for another. Like Diouana, the mask is out of place. She talks to it, telling it of her despair, as the only thing in the apartment that reminds her of home.

In voice-over, Diouana laments, ‘‘la cuisine, la salle de bains, la chambre a`coucher. Je ne fais que c
a,’’ (the kitchen, the bathroom, the bedroom. That’s allI do). This commentary seems a little too self-evident to need saying. It is the framing and the sequencing of visual images that create a real sense of claustrophobia.

The floor of the apartment is composed of long lines of black and white tiles which seem to hem Diouana in as she endlessly sweeps, like a pawn in a game of giants. The enclosed space of the apartment becomes almost intolerable to both Diouana and the viewer. Sembene increases this effect by framing Diouana closed in by the ironing board on one side and a hugh pile of dishes on the other. The camera pans to the ceiling where we discover clothes drying on an overhead rack. Surrounded by household chores, Diouana has less and less room to breathe.

As she tells her troubles to the mask, there is a cut to Dakar, and a long flashback

of her earlier life there. At last we find the relief we were looking for. Almost

all the scenes in Dakar are shot outdoors, in bright sunlight, often among crowds

of people. Here is the light, company, and life that are lacking in the Antibes

apartment. This sequencing is subversive, in Butler’s terms, because it turns the

conventions around, presenting Africa as a place of light and openness, bustle and

movement, while our view of France is restricted to the black and white lines of

the floor tiles. Occasionally the camera vouchsafes us a view of the city of Antibes

and the beach in the distance, but it is clearly out of reach and seems more like a

reminder of a dream gone sour.

Before she kills herself, Diouana wrestles with her employer to get back the

mask. As the two women spin around on those black and white tiles, we see a

fight for mastery of images of Africa. Although Diouana seizes the mask, she dies

shortly afterwards. But the story of the mask continues even after her death. Her

employers return to Dakar and the husband attempts to give Diouana’s scant

possessions to her mother. Just as earlier we saw the mother throw down the

mask, now we see her reject this offer of reparation. Her power is in her silence,

her refusal to explain. The mask, unlike those in the Muse´e de l’Homme, has

been returned to Africa, but there are no thanks offered for its return. Instead,

Diouana’s little brother picks it up again, puts it on his own face, and silently

402 Review Essays

follows his sister’s employer out of the Medina. As the francophone film critic,

Franc
oise Pfaff, observes, ‘‘the mask worn by the little boy becomes a new symbol

of Africa, past and present. It follows the white man’s guilt and eventually rejects

him’’ [1984: 122].

Like Mambety, Sembene forces the viewer to connect the dots of his critique.

Diouana sampled the proffered corner of Paradise and died there; the mask

returned, but it is a denatured mask that is disconnected from its earlier function.

The disaffected Mory of Touki Bouki got no further in his journey to Paris than the

European center of his own home town and found it a place already saturated

with Western images. The return of the mask cannot erase the loss suffered by its

former owners. In the very last frames of La Noire de . . ., we see the boy take off

the mask and look straight at the camera as though asking: What future can there

be for African images, and who will decide on their meaning?4

Source:

Everyone Would Rather Be in Paris, Visual Anthropology[/lang_en]

Categories: Film. Tags: Film, Resensi