(Nov 8 ● Oslin Pierrette)
A dark depiction of a black woman.
A black woman coming out of Senegal is chosen to be a maid for a white French family. She’s so happy because it’s a vision of hope and maybe freedom for her. She can find work and make something for herself. The idea of France is filling her with hopes and dreams.
Then she gets there and she’s working. She thought it was a kid watching job. But she’s cleaning and cooking for them. Being bossed around. She feels this isn’t what she signed up for. She wanted to see France. Feel what being a free woman is like. Go adventure and experience life in Cannes and Nice, the beautiful parts of France. But instead she has to cater to this family’s every need. Only allowed to go from the kitchen to the bedroom. The family brings friends over and she is cooking and cleaning for all of them. She’s watching in disgust, them hawking in all that food. While they talk about and disrespect her.
She now realizes she’s just a maid. Not even respected as a human. Just an object that can be bossed around whenever they want. And she has to deal with this grumpy white woman. This white woman seems like she’s disturbed and ugly on the inside. She’s unhappy with herself. And basically has this play toy slave to take it out on, treating Diouana like a punching bag, to release all the pain that the white women is dealing with in her own life.
Diouana is hurt because she understands she is just there as a slave, that only gets to travel from her bedroom to the kitchen, rotting away. She came to France to find aspirations and hope for herself. But she is just a slave to the family. Which destroys her. She didn’t have the luxury of writing or learning things. Probably because Senegalese women probably don’t have the luxury of education. Decapitating their ability to make and create things for herself. Destroying her chance of independence and autonomy. So she can only accept what society will offer. And for a Senegalese woman, it isn’t much. All you can really do is hope your cleaning, cooking, and nurturing skills are good, because those are the skills that get you chosen. Unlike being a white woman from France who has the luxury of doing nothing and still being rewarded the luxury of comfort. And this is the story for a wide diaspora for black women to this day. From African women to Caribbean women, even brown women. Places where women live that have strict values of what a woman should be. Which is a vast amount of communities.
So when Diouana realizes this. Realizes there is nothing in the world for her. She decides there’s no use in doing anything. No value in slaving away making money. When you can’t do anything with it. She’s just gonna leave. She won’t take people degrading her life…
Then that’s when she slits her own throat. And they depicted that very shockingly and emphatically. I did not expect it, but then understood she got to the idea of her dream world and found there was no hope. She felt maybe the world isn’t for her. A dark depiction of the life of a black woman.
Beautiful film.