[English review] Ô Madiana by Constant Gros-Dubois

On October 14th 2017, I attended the “premiere” of the film “O Madiana”. This is the restored version of 1979. I had no idea this film existed until @_Fouye told me about the Caribbean and Overseas Film Week in September. I watched the program and it was only the weekend movies (at the same time, I can't go out on weekdays anyway since I have a job now) that piqued my interest. I won't get the chance to see “Siméon” again, but I told myself that I couldn't let “O Madiana” pass me by, especially since there was a Q&A session with the screenwriter and director Constant Gros-Dubois.

Complicated storytelling

This is the only "negative" point for me. Despite the main arc clearly identified, the plot feels a little bit all over the place. The changes in the characters’ psychological state are not always shown. These temporal ellipses make it seem like these characters are just here to recreate realistic situations and not multidimensional characters that life was breathed into. Like the opening sequence with secondary characters having no relationship with the main characters until the last 20 minutes of the film. The writer / director has placed the emphasis on "before / after" sometimes without insisting on the "meanwhile" or the "how". For example, there is no explanation on why the West Indian characters establish relationships between them (it’s about survival in their context) the children's voices are ignored. The characters are only defined by their moments of suffering. I didn’t get why the solidarity was only shown at certain times.

During the Q&A session, I indirectly had the answer to this question. Constant Gros-Dubois' goal was to show the difficulties that immigrant West Indians encountered. His goal was not to show the life of immigrant West Indians. When you adjust your lens to this vision, then you understand the storytelling choices. I don't buy into it completely, but I understand it. Employment and housing are two aspects through which racism expresses itself. 90 minutes is too short of a time to show racism. And it’s also long enough when you get confronted to one unfair situation after the other.

A life of daily suffering

The strength of the film is its authenticity. Each situation had something to resonate in the hearts of any migrant person. The dialogues are theatrical, which makes the racist remarks of certain characters all the more peremptory. What is disturbing is the racism clearly expressed by the white characters. No white savior (sorry for the anachronism of the term), the few White characters are confrontational either because they, like the one portrayed by Anemone, are themselves frustrated with the situation the West Indian characters have to deal with either because they are antagonists like the house landlord or the boss of Léontine.

Beyond racism against Black people, the discourse is also straightforward on specific Antillean issues. This quest for identity as an individual, as an Antillean person, as a French person... These questions arise through different generations. From Robert and Léontine "freshly" arrived from Martinique to their friends Jonas and Lucien who lived this dream before them, including Jimmy and Annie, young adults born in Martinique but having lived all their life in a Paris where they are not happy . What is disturbing is how the characters express their unhappiness in terms very similar to what I still hear today.

Both Robert and Léontine have their own way to fight against the derailment of their life. He takes refuge in a ceremonial Africanness, she takes refuge in becoming a whitewashed version of herself until she falls into depression. The word depression is said and it stands out all the more for a 2017 viewer since it feels like Black mental health in the media was a taboo until… a decade ago? Constant Gros-Dubois being a doctor, there is no reason to be surprised by the medical dimension of the narrative choices with another subplot being about the drug issue among young people, but I think it was important to point it out.

A testimony of the Caribbean burgeoning entertainment

The paradox with “O Madiana” is that this film is about uprooting... or rather about claiming roots that are self-generating by giving visibility to actors that the French film industry still considers foreigners and leaves in the shadows. I forgot his name (sorry), but the grandson of Darling Légitimus... or the nephew of Théo Légitimus (really sorry for not remembering his presentation) paid a vibrant homage to them as well as to Benjamin Jules-Rosette, the founder of Black theatre who plays the lead role here. He recalled that the absence of these films, the lack of recognition of these actors and actresses prevent the transmission from one generation to another, which gives the impression of an eternal artistic “new beginnings” when the foundations were laid as early as the 70's and 80's. Benjamin Jules-Rosette was present at the screening (black don't crack, people) and he was quite moved. Nevertheless, what really touched me was the elegant woman sitting right behind me that I only saw when I left the room. Despite the years, I recognized her right away. It was Rose-Marie Fixy, the one playing Léontine. I shook her hand and thanked her for the film. She remained discreet and I didn't say any more because I was afraid to bother her, especially since her friends from the theatre came to greet her. But I would have liked to tell her how much her character moved me. The film is resolutely constructed from the male gaze, but the female characters sketched suggested the richness of the stories to be told about that time.

Transmission, transmission, transmission

When I opened my blog myinsaeng.com, it was all about keeping track of these links in the chain of transmission of our Caribbean identities. Listening to the generation in their fifties and beyond, I still think that they feel that today's generation in their thirties and forties is solely responsible for this lack of transmission, that the teenagers of the 80s and 90s refused to listen, refused to take an interest in the experiences of their grandparents and parents’ generation. Nevertheless, communication must be a two-way street. When this film was released in 1979, did it help to open discussions within families? We know that relationships between the family left on the island and the family in France can sometimes be strained because of the mutual ignorance of each other’s daily life. This film, which is still relevant today, shows perfectly what is happening on this side of the Atlantic ocean, without dramatizing or embellishing. A DVD is in preparation. I hope that “O Madiana” will also be available in streaming so as to facilitate access to this story of the first generations of the Afrocaribbean diaspora.