[English review] "35 Rums" by Claire Denis
I was a bit apprehensive about “35 Rums” and Alex Descas is the only reason I ended up watching it anyway. With Claire Denis directing, this film was released in 2009.
Allôciné synopsis: Lionel is a RER driver. He has been raising his daughter, Josephine, alone since she was a little girl. Now, she is a young woman. They live side by side, a bit like a couple, refusing to take on opportunities life gives them. For Lionel, nothing matters but his daughter, and for Josephine, nothing matters but her father. Little by little, Lionel realizes that time has passed, even for them. Maybe it's time for them to go their separate way...
“35 Rums” is the kind of film in which silences say more than the few lines that the characters pronounce. The slow pace invites you to let yourself be lulled by the hum of the daily routine. Death is omnipresent. It hovers around them like a shadow bearing the nostalgia of happy and unhappy memories. It’s seen more as a stage in life than an unfair sentence, a sudden stop or a farewell full of regret. It shapes each character for whom life goes on.
An unsual representation of Caribbean fatherhood
The film's main theme is the father-daughter relationship which is revealed in a delicate way. While a few scenes allow us to discover Lionel (Alex Descas) and Josephine (Mati Diop), each in their own universe from which the other is absent (college for the daughter and work for the father), the moments when they are together highlight the simplicity of their complicity developed without the mother. As Josephine reconnects with her maternal family who is German, there is no ambiguity about the fact that Lionel was in an interracial marriage. The German nationality is probably partly explained by the fact that this is a co-production, but the result is that the film fits into the usual pattern of the interracial family in French fiction: a Black father and a White mother. Nevertheless, Lionel's widowhood allows us to show a side of the Caribbean father that is rarely mentioned: the caring father. The figure of the Potomitan (“pillar”) mother is so strong in Caribbean culture that the father is generally relegated to the role of a mere observer who only takes part in his children's lives in specific moments outside the home - and that is when he is actually present. The film begins at the end of a chapter in the father-daughter relationship as it’s time for Josephine to begin her adult life. However, their mutual affection and the fact that Lionel never remarried define him as a Potomitan father. Claire Denis said in an interview that she was inspired by her own story of her grandfather and mother having a close relationship. Generally speaking, the discourse of the film does indeed play on universal values that are rarely staged (a widower raising his daughter alone), and even less so when the father is Caribbean…
Invisibilized Caribbean fatherhood?
In fact, apart from the legend of the 35 Rums, there is nothing in Lionel's character that is specifically Caribbean, hence the fact that the reunion with the mother's family in the last part of the film left me unsettled. Until then, I hadn't seen the color of Alex Descas. All I could see was a caring father who, for once, happens to be black. After the sequence with the maternal family, I was more questioning. In terms of what was at stake in the performance, I first wondered what could have expressed the father's Caribbeanness and whether it would have prevented him from being seen as a universal father. Then, I realized that the question was more complex because Lionel is a Caribbean man in France. Being from the French colonies necessarily influences one’s education and relationship to their family, so I won’t act like I know everything about what being a Caribbean father is. I don't know at all how Caribbean fathers from here or fathers from there see themselves (I’ll let you decide the meaning of here and there according to which side of the Atlantic Ocean you're on)... Anyway, exploring this side of the character's identity doesn't seem to me to be the purpose of “35 Rums”, so there's no need to say more. However, by directing Alex Descas, this film offers an alternative to the usual overbearing presence of the potomitan mother (played by Firmine Richard in most films for the past twenty years) and the traditional absence of the father in the representation of the Caribbean family.
This is article was first published on myinsaeng.com on June 1st 2016. You can read the French version here.