Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Rebelle/War Witch by Kim Nguyen

2014; American Association of Teachers of French; Volume: 87; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/tfr.2014.0372

2329-7131

Miléna Santoro,

Cultural Identity and Heritage

Nguyen, Kim, réal. Rebelle/War Witch. Int. Rachel Mwanza, Alain Bastien, Serge Kanyinda. Métropole, 2012. The third consecutive Quebec film to be a finalist for Best Foreign Language Oscar, Rebelle dominated the 2013 Canadian Screen Awards with ten prizes, including Best Picture. The film’s standout is Rachel Mwanza, Best Actress winner in Berlin and at Tribeca in 2012. Rebelle is the most successful of Nguyen’s eclectic œuvre; his previous features are Le marais (2002), Truffe (2008), and La cité (2010), the last being a SwissCanadian co-production set in North Africa and inspired by Camus’s La peste. Based on an original screenplay developed over a decade and shot entirely in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the film has several unusual qualities, including that several main roles are played by Kinshasa locals, like Mwanza, who lived on the street prior to Rebelle.Moreover, the press kit reveals Nguyen’s innovative choice to shoot in sequence, so that the (non-)actors ‘discovered’ the story as it unfolded in the day’s shooting script. On its face, this film recalls the horrors of many recent African conflicts: twelveyear -old Komona is captured and trained by rebels in a war-torn country. Those closest to her are massacred or murdered on the orders of the rebels, who indoctrinate her, abuse her, impregnate her, and yet also venerate her as a “witch,” given her seeming supernatural ability to emerge unscathed from armed clashes.Along the way, Komona discovers love with an albino youth nicknamed“Magicien,”manages to kill her rapist and commander, and gives birth to her baby on her way back to her village to honor her dead parents, who were also the first people the rebels forced her to kill. Although its violence is not gratuitous, given its premise, what makes this more than mere spectacle is the candid and subtle performances of the adolescent actors portraying the delicate promise of first love despite war’s horrors. Equally striking is the treatment of Komona’s ‘visions’ of those who have died, played by actors covered in ghostly white body paint, recalling African face and body painting traditions. Indeed,while the actors speak Lingala mixed with French, still the official language of the former Belgian colony, the film leaves its setting vague (although for some, President Mobutu’s private palace, used as the rebel base, is a location tell). Overall, the film maintains its Africancentered perspective, with few reminders of former colonial powers, excepting some American-made vehicles, Russian guns, and the cinematic‘citation’of Jean-Claude Van Damme’s 1992 Universal Soldier,watched with naïve enthusiasm by all the child recruits except Komona and Magicien.If post-colonial power struggles fuel the conflict in which Komona unwillingly participates, the film’s main focus is on her personal journey and remarkable resilience. Unlike earlier Quebec films partially or wholly set in Africa— starting with Le Niger, jeune république, Claude Jutra’s 1961 documentary, and including the more recent features Un dimanche à Kigali (Favreau,2006) and Congorama (Falardeau, 2006)—Rebelle does not reference Quebec. In this, it is perhaps another sign that Quebec’s film industry is truly international in its imaginary and financing. Georgetown University (DC) Miléna Santoro 244 FRENCH REVIEW 87.3 ...