Eye Haïdara is a modern-day vigilante in Les Femmes du square, a social comedy, directed by Julien Rambaldi, on view this Wednesday, highlighting the invisibles of society.
Angèle, a young Ivorian woman, has always gotten away with it thanks to her chat and her nerve. To avoid reprisals from a gang of thugs, she manages to get hired as the nanny of Arthur, an 8-year-old boy from uptown. Discovering the working conditions of the other nannies and their precariousness, Angèle decides to take matters into her own hands. Under the admiring eye of Arthur and with the help of Édouard, a young lawyer who soon falls under his spell, Angèle will then fight to bring justice…
Get to know Les Femmes du square! This social comedy, carried by a nice cast (Eye Haïdara, Ahmed Sylla and Léa Drucker in the lead), is one of the nice surprises of this fall. A film that finds the right dose of comedy, suspense, while bringing a real point about people who can be considered as part of the invisible in society. The film has, in fact, at its heart, everyday heroines, these women who take care of other people’s children, and more particularly women of immigrant origin who often have to sacrifice their personal lives for that of others.
“It is a reality: we call on women who leave their children in their country to take care of ours. Something is wrong with this state of affairs.underlines Julien Rambaldi, director and screenwriter, in the press kit. It’s one of the cogs in my film: how can Angèle (Eye Haïdara) become attached to a child she’s babysitting in Paris, while hers is growing up in Côte d’Ivoire? This bond, which can sometimes be transformed into a maternal bond, is complex.
My film, I hope, sheds light on the indispensability of these underappreciated people.
There is also a whole political hypocrisy that allows this kind of situation to take hold, especially in a city like Paris, which is sorely lacking in crèches. Parents find themselves forced to employ women who have no papers; however, in order for them to be eligible for a residence permit, they must be declared. So there’s a whole reverse organization operating, because we need these women. My film, I hope, sheds light on this aberrant situation, and on the indispensability of these people who are too little considered.”
The film is carried by the excellent Eye Haïdara, surrounded in particular by Léa Drucker and Ahmed Sylla, and a funny and remarkably accurate child, Vidal Arzoni.
“My heroine, is a movie character, a kind of angel, not quite realistic“, indicates Julien Rambaldi. And to add: “she is a modern-day vigilante, (…) years of Erin Brockovich’s movement! I also wanted it to be very beautiful and spectacular. I wanted Angèle to be powerful and find herself doing this job by chance. It was important to the story that she didn’t come from the microcosm of babysitters, so that she had some distance and spotted anything that wasn’t acceptable right away.”
To feed the starting point of his film, Julien Rambaldi simply observed his daily life, in this case his son and the woman who took care of him after school. “My desire to make this film came from them. Watching their relationship, I realized that my then seven-year-old son knew this woman better than I did. He was aware of her family and health problems; he even went to Morocco with her once. Both were melting.
In a home where the parents are separated, these women become reference points for the children.
“In a home where the parents are separated, these women become reference points for the children. The parents are immersed in their professional life without realizing that this is made possible thanks to these women, who spend more time with the children of whom they care only with their own. It is this relationship that I wanted to tell, as well as this invisible wall between the parents and these home helpers, this game of hide and seek that operates in these apartments whose children are at the heart .“
Les Femmes du square situates its plot in a square close to the 9th and 18th arrondissements of Paris, this district occupying an important place in the plot, playing on the contrasts of this part of the North East of Paris.
Les Femmes du square is in theaters this Wednesday.