Black par Adil El Arbi et Bilall Fallah (review)

Reviews 205 El Arbi, Adil, et Bilall Fallah, réal. Black. Int. Martha Canga Antonio, Aboubakr Bensaihi. A Team, 2015. Billed as a film “entre Roméo et Juliette et La haine,” El Arbi and Fallah’s recent release is an adaptation of the Belgian author Dirk Bracke’s Flemish-language books Black (2006) and Back (2008). After the opening crosscutting sequences in which the main characters are arrested for petty acts of crime, Mavela (a member of the Brussels “Black Bronx”gang) and Marwan (a member of a rival Moroccan gang, the 1080s) fall in love at the police station. As one can surmise given the Shakespearean billing, love between members of these adolescent gangs is strictly forbidden. Black is gritty and hard-hitting. Drugs, gang rape, and senseless acts of violence (involving humans and animals) dominate the action. The subject matter is heavy with potential to make an important statement on the Belgian banlieue—rendered ever more pertinent given that the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks were committed by inhabitants of Molenbeek, a neighborhood where scenes of Black were filmed. That said, greater character development would have made the film’s message more powerful and less stereotypical. The reasons why the characters have fallen into gang life remain largely unknown and unexplained.As a result, the one-dimensional gang members appear unthinking, cruel, and directionless. The final title card of the film announces that “[d]epuis 2002, 23 personnes ont été tuées dans les guerres de gangs à Bruxelles,”suggesting to what extent the film reflects real life in the city’s suburbs. However, despite the apparent desire to portray reality, the vivid gang rape scene is disquietingly stereotypical in that it does little to de-glorify the act. It is presented via the male perspective despite the fact (pardon the spoiler) that the main female protagonist is the victim. Mavela writhes and screams under the hand that muffles her, but instead of presenting her point of view, the film opts for repeated shots of her breasts and the defiant faces of her rapists accompanied by strains of contemporary rap music. In other words, identification (albeit uncomfortable) with the rapists or an unidentified voyeuristic (presumably male) onlooker is privileged over identification with the main character/victim. Black’s website describes the film as appropriate for secondary schools. Given the nudity, violence, language, and graphic gang rape scene, screening this film in an American high school would likely require a substantial amount of contextualization and discussion.At the college level, the film might be paired with a screening of Kassovitz’s twenty-year-old La haine as a way to reflect on society’s failure over time to resolve the problems of inequity, inequality, and violence that continue to plague the Francophone banlieue. Juxtaposed in this manner, Black’s cold, superficial, and seemingly random acts of violence may take on new and more alarming significance for what they say about life today in the margins of European urban centers. Boise State University (ID) Mariah Devereux Herbeck ...