“Mambar Pierrette”, Mother Courage in a district of Douala

FILMMAKERS’ FORTNIGHT

Invited to the Quinzaine des cinéastes, the Cameroonian Rosine Mbakam, born in Yaoundé in 1980 and living in Belgium, renowned for her documentary work (The Two Faces of a Bamileke Woman, At Jolie Coiffure, Delphine’s Prayers), draws up, for its first fictional incursion, the portrait of fatigue. The piercing one that falls on Pierrette, a seamstress from a working-class district of Douala raising her two boys alone, facing an upsurge in orders as the start of the new school year approaches, as well as hard-toothed customers who fiercely negotiate clothing prices.

The overfull existence ends up overflowing, like the streets of the neighborhood under the blow of torrential rains, flooding his apartments, when a band of little thugs who have come to steal his cash register complete the blackening of the picture. No respite on the horizon for this Mother Courage who decides to confiscate her son’s kitty in order to make ends meet.

Extreme simplicity

Pierrette therefore sews more beautifully, in her small workshop, focal point of the story and crossroads of the city, where women and children, gossips and coquettes, more rarely men, pass. Consider a sectional view of Cameroonian society – and it gradually appears that it is also this that Pierrette tirelessly sews up. Like her colleague, Félicité by Franco-Senegalese director Alain Gomis (in the film of the same name released in 2017), Pierrette composes an allegory of the country, because it is on her shoulders that, as a last resort, all her problems, the most obvious of which would be the resignation of men.

With extreme simplicity, and very discreet staging choices, Rosine Mbakam disappears behind the outlines of her character, drawn with fine touches in a register combining description and chiseled sociology. It’s when it works that the film convinces a little less, because then the voluntarism of the writing is felt. The restless tranquility prevails over the duration, by the very truth emanating from the figures depicted, but also by its picture of a social deprivation which never yields to a coup de force or miserabilism. Here, the most serious things are revealed and healed, at the same time, by the patience of the plans.