A Menina dos olhos grandes/Girl with Big Eyes is the last film I'd like to mention that I saw in the Black International Cinema in Berlin. Directed by Alexis Tsafas and Fonseca Soares, it's a feature length drama about a young girl of mixed parentage (Spanish mother, Cape Verdian father) who was born and spent her early years in Cape Verde, but then went to Spain for her schooling and only returned to Cape Verde as a young woman.
I was not able to contact either of the directors of this film, so have no photos to present. But I can say that it is charming and complex.
The young woman, who left for Spain to live with her mother's family after her mother died, believes that the Cape Verdian woman who replaced her mother in her father's life, is a bad person who stole her father away and has too much influence on him. Not an unusual thought for a young girl, especially one who has recently lost her mother.
Our heroine also believes the "new" woman is practicing witch-craft.
And, well, she is. Witch-craft, in this context meaning something akin to voodoo, is an accepted practice in Cape Verde.
When our young woman returns, she finds her father dead and the "new" woman dying. She learns, through talking to those who knew her father, that things can be very tough in Cape Verde. For example, the "new" woman comes from an impoverished family. Her relationship with the father is one of the ways she keeps herself AND her own mother and sister from starving.
Our young woman also learns that her leaving Cape Verde had a devastating effect on her father.
The movie ends with our young woman sadder but wiser. The story is told in a convincing manner, the acting is fine, and the setting is appropriate.
But I found several flaws in the film. The main one has to do with its reliance on flashbacks. And the problem here is that it was not always clear to me what time period we were in. This was especially true when we saw our heroine as a teenager and realized it was the same actress as our heroine as a young woman. Using the same actress in scenes supposedly years apart made the context very confusing.
On the whole, however, I really enjoyed this and found that the story touching. Three cheers to the filmmakers.
NOTE: For those of you who, like me, aren't sure where Cape Verde is, it's two small islands off the coast of West Africa. The principal languages are Portuguese (for years it was a Portuguese colony but is now independent) and Crioulo. Most of the inhabitants are black.
OUR NEXT POST will be about black Latinos' identity: black, or Latino, or both?
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