A Migrant Family Romance and its Representation in Music: Karim Dridi's Bye-Bye (1995)

The 1995 film Bye-bye, directed by Franco-Tunisian film maker Karim Dridi, portrays a family caught between return to North Africa and settlement in France, and asks how the post-colonial condition can be conceptualised when a first generation of Arab immigrants, their French-born children and the host nation must come to terms with different, and at times incompatible, expectations regarding their own culture. In tackling this issue, the film creates a soundscape that inter-mingles the representations of all these subjects who claim their rightful place in France with a vibrant musical plenitude. Drawing on Mireille Rosello's theoretical concepts, such as the reciprocity of les hôtes (host and guest), I read the use of filmic music as a call for the recognition of inter-culturation, an indispensable part of Marseilles's post-colonial imaginary represented in Bye-Bye.