Gomis Diouana (Mbissine Therese Diop) came to this job as a domestic servant expecting one thing but got something else entirely. Originally residing in Senegal, she was enticed to take on this job working for a white French couple known only as Madame (Anne-Marie Jelinek) and Monsieur (Robert Fontaine) (two characters who smartly never get names so that they can only be known as people who carry on the legacy of racial horrors rather than as actual human beings) for the promise of money and taking care of children. Now that she's here, though, the truth comes out about what Gomis has actually become ensnared in. The children she was supposed to take care of are rarely around and she's stuck doing dehumanizing work for her employers while never being allowed to leave the house she lives in. Gomis came here to be an employee but she's instead become a prisoner.
With Black Girl, writer/director Ousmane Sembene needs only a 59-minute-runtime to shine a light upon the anguish of a black woman in then-modern-day French society. Though slavery had been abolished in France in 1848, racism and institutions akin to traditional slavery still persisted both in this country and in other parts of the world (including the United States of America) where slavery had seemingly been eradicated. For privileged members of society who don't have to deal with racism on a daily basis, the mere abolition of slavery would seem to have put an end to racism itself, but Sembene's work in Black Girl attempts to show the inherently nonsensical nature of that sentiment by unflinchingly depicting what kind of misery Gomis Diouana experiences in a situation set in the present-day world that hardly feels all that separated from slavery.
To ensure that the perspective of this character is realized in a visceral fashion, the story never loses sights of the character of Gomis Diouana. Everything here, save for a somber epilogue sequence, is told through her eyes, where Gomis goes, so does the movie. There aren't even establishing shots of the house she's trapped in because, well, she can't go out and take a gander at where she's now forced to reside so why should the audience? Similar subtle ways of constantly putting the audience into the shows of Gomis Diouana stand out as some of the most impressive traits of Sembene's screenplays. Similarly impressively realized in the writing is an assortment of flashback sequences showing what kind of life Gomis lived before her current tragic situation.
These breaks from the primary storyline focus on little everyday events, like Diouana walking atop a monument people aren't supposed to walk on or spending an afternoon stroll with a lover. Through these slices of mundane life, Black Girl allows us to see Gomis as a fully-formed person beyond just the misery she endures at the hands of Madame and Monsieur. The same can be said for persistent voice-over capturing the inner thoughts of Gomis Diouana even when she's forced to keep silent by her employers. Placing such a heavy emphasis on voice-over work is an especially brilliant move in the context of this specific story since it allows Gomis to express herself to the viewer while having on-screen visuals accurately portray how much the people around her force her to be little more than an object in the background they can dismiss with ease.
Her employers and their friends see Gomis Diouana as less-than-human but the movie she stars in most certainly doesn't and reinforces this in every way, particularly in Mbissine Therese Diop's lead performance that captures the multitude of emotions the character is constantly experiencing in a vivid manner. On a physical level, Diop's performance drips with a fascinating mixture of anguish and frustration, she's fully aware of the bitter injustice of what's happening to her but the former aspect of her performance stems from how she's also fully aware of the lack of options for helping her get out of this nightmare of an existence. Though Diouana is commanded to just linger without much in the way of a personality by her superiors, Diop's performance ensures she always commands discernable personality and humanity whenever she's on-screen.
Diop's voice-over work is just as effective as her work as a physical performer, particularly whenever she conveys a wistful attitude for the past that just splits your heart into two with ease. If one thinks Diop's communication of yearning in her voice-over work is devastating, just wait until the final scene of Black Girl transpires concerning the suicide of Gomis Diouana. At first, ending on a note that focuses exclusively on killing off the protagonist felt like it goes against the primary mission of the movie to reaffirm the humanity of the movie, but a final shot emphasizing the sorrow of a young boy, after learning of Diouana's death, made me realize this does work as an ending to this particular tale. With this final moment, Black Girl is emphasizing how, despite all the pervasive attempts by Monsieur and Madame to dehumanize Diouana, she still registered as a human being to so many and her death leaves an empty spot in this world that these two monsters cannot possibly begin to fill. The sanctity of every life affected by racism and modern-day forms of slavery is communicated in an unforgettable manner in this gruesome but eventually essential conclusion to Ousmane Sembene's Black Girl.
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