The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open | Little White Lies

The Body Remem­bers When the World Broke Open

09 Jan 2020

Two individuals, a man and a woman, standing on a street corner. The man is wearing a tie-dye hooded jacket, while the woman is wearing a beige coat. They appear to be engaged in conversation.
Two individuals, a man and a woman, standing on a street corner. The man is wearing a tie-dye hooded jacket, while the woman is wearing a beige coat. They appear to be engaged in conversation.
3

Anticipation.

A small entourage of praise has followed this film since it premiered at 2019 Berlin Film Festival.

4

Enjoyment.

A gripping, real-time thriller, with a young woman’s safety as the stakes.

5

In Retrospect.

It’s rare to find a film of such bottomless depths.

This grip­ping dra­ma writ­ten, direct­ed by and star­ring an Indige­nous Cana­di­an woman has qui­et­ly snuck onto Netflix.

On a busy and rainy Van­cou­ver street, Áila (Elle-Mái­já Tail­feath­ers) finds Rosie (Vio­let Nel­son), trem­bling in bare feet, her face show­ing evi­dence of fresh abuse. The rage­ful cries of her assailant ring out, too close for com­fort. Áila asks Rosie if she should call the police. No. Áila spir­its Rosie away to her chic and calm apart­ment, pro­vides dry clothes and explores alter­na­tive places for her to go, for Rosie’s abuser lives with her in a hous­ing project. He is her boyfriend and she is preg­nant with his baby.

This premise, based on an encounter expe­ri­enced by Elle-Mái­já Tail­feath­ers (who wrote and direct­ed this film with Kath­leen Hep­burn), blos­soms into a tense rela­tion­ship dra­ma pow­ered by refined under­stand­ing of how eth­nic­i­ty, class and char­ac­ter impact a woman’s response to inti­mate part­ner vio­lence. The safe­ty of Rosie and her unborn baby are the stakes puls­ing beneath a qui­et, docu-real­is­tic sur­face as the sto­ry unfolds in one long take across real time.

Áila wants to help Rosie to leave her boyfriend – an infec­tious impulse; I want­ed it bad­ly too – and Rosie’s resis­tance seems to fly in the face of her own inter­ests. Seems’ is the key word for the film is blind­ing­ly suc­cess­ful at mak­ing view­ers under­stand on a bone-deep lev­el that what presents as a stub­born defen­sive­ness is root­ed in his­toric trau­ma and a sub­se­quent desire to go one’s own way.

Rosie is a mem­ber of the Kwakwaka’wakw First Nation and the assump­tion that she and her baby will be bet­ter off in insti­tu­tion­al care finds direct oppo­si­tion in very recent Cana­di­an his­to­ry. The so-called Six­ties Scoop’ saw the Cana­di­an author­i­ties steal­ing tens of thou­sands of abo­rig­i­nal chil­dren from their fam­i­lies and plac­ing them in fos­ter care. Nei­ther this inci­dent, nor oth­ers from the laun­dry-list in exis­tence, is explic­it­ly ver­balised, instead it is a source of sub­tex­tu­al pow­er, ges­tured towards via the women’s cama­raderie which deep­ens as the film pro­gress­es. Áila, it emerges, is also Indige­nous, albeit able to pass as white.

The terms of their rela­tion­ship shift from sav­iour-and-vic­tim, to some­thing infi­nite­ly more com­plex, humane and polit­i­cal. None of this ever feels dry or aca­d­e­m­ic, thanks to the raw­ness of the per­for­mances and a nat­u­ral­is­tic pac­ing that makes as much use of silence as it does the bril­liant­ly writ­ten dia­logue. Lines emerge emphat­i­cal­ly out of preg­nant paus­es, flinty with the residue of those left unsaid.

The Body Remem­ber When the World Broke Open’ is an essay poem by Indige­nous Cana­di­an schol­ar and writer Bil­ly-Ray Bel­court. He makes ref­er­ence to the unruly vibra­tions of the past-present”. Tail­feath­ers and Hep­burn cap­ture those vibra­tions, adding to the mix a dif­fer­ent set: the vibra­tions that emanate from the respect­ful way that Áila and Rosie come to see each oth­er. This extra­or­di­nar­i­ly thought­ful film has the pow­er to rewire assump­tions around how we can relate to each oth­er in times of crisis.

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