Samia: Calling All Black Girls

Samia: Calling All Black Girls�

by Esther Iverem
SeeingBlack.com Editor and Film Critic

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I vote "Samia" as the Black girl flick of the year. And I vote young actress Lynda Benahouda as Home Girl of the Year. This unembellished, plotless yet engrossing film maintains unswerving sympathy for a young teen-age Algerian girl growing up in Marseille, France. Samia, who swishes through the world with a thick ponytail and much attitude, could easily live in North Philly or the South Side of Chicago. She is a poster child for roll-your-neck Black girl defiance. Samia is defiant of racism in the streets and of her disfunctional family at home. And, to top it off, she has the regular teen-ager funky surliness.

Director Philippe Faucon tells a complex story in a very unadorned fashioned, yet he manages to cover lots of turf: a young girl's disdain for the school system and for the prospect of dead-end jobs, her budding interest in boys, the conflict between Muslim traditions at home and the decadence of Western life. Most of all, it shows Samia's determination to make her own way in a world dotted with minefields. Skinheads in the streets aren't afraid to curse her and her mother, calling them "dirty Arabs." At home, she must contend with a household where women are subservient to men. She is expected to clean her brothers' rooms and serve them at the dinner table.

The major tension and story line, such as it is, is the relationship Samia and her sisters have with their older brother Yacine. Big brother Yacine takes it upon himself to safeguard the honor and virginity of his sisters against French men who "take all the pretty" Algerian women. He is painted as a rabid, obsessive and angry young man. He is unable to find work and morosely suggests that if, perhaps, his name was Francois, a job might be easier to come by. He takes his place in a French version of the brothers on the corner—out of work, angry, resentful and sometimes exercising their limited sense of power over those at home.

In his home excursions, Yacine is sometimes given support by their mother Halima. Plump and always in motion about the small apartment, Halima is bundle of thickening frustration as she tries to play referee in a household where her daughters are restless and rebellious and Yacine is bullying and sometimes physically abusive.

This little movie, based on a true story, goes a long way to depict the emotional and social texture of the Algerian community in France. There is fasting at Ramadan, a bridal shower and a wedding. There is the trip to the doctor to determine if the virginity of the daughters is still intact. And, just when everything seems to be bouncing along and building to some kind of finale, the film ends. We are left with a story and a life as a work-in-progress. And perhaps this ending is as it should be in a tale about a teen-ager, who has her work cut out for her.

Screened at Filmfest D.C. 2001.

-- May 17, 2001

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