Manele Labidi • Director of Queen Mom
“Producing stories helps us escape from socially assigned roles”
- We met with the filmmaker as she presented her new film in Cinemamed’s closing slot, and chatted with her about the way she set out to explore issues of exile and racism
Discovered by way of Arab Blues [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Manele Labidi
film profile] in 2019, Manele Labidi is back on the scene with Queen Mom [+see also:
film review
interview: Manele Labidi
film profile], an unclassifiable family dramedy which looks to open up dialogue between history as it’s commonly told and the many stories emerging from a constellation of accounts about immigration, coming from the people who made France in the 1990s. On the occasion of the film’s presentation within Cinemamed’s closing slot, Labibdi spoke to us about the way she set about exploring issues of exile and racism through the singular stories of Mouna, Amel and Amor.
Cineuropa: What’s at the heart of this film, for you?
Manele Labidi: I really like to present Queen Mom as an intimate and political film. And as a film for the cinema too. I insist on that aspect of it because, for me, cinema is a tool which allows me to produce my own story, to produce images which I couldn’t see anywhere else and which are still missing today. Yes, I start with real-life, but there’s something almost alchemic about taking reality, trauma, suffering and violence as a basis, and then transforming them through film.
What was the spark which led you to turn this real-life material into fiction?
I wanted to tell this story, but I was also holding myself back. But then, when I became a mother, there was no getting away from revisiting my childhood. Things started to shift in my mind, as me, my sisters and my cousins shared our memories together. We ended up talking about Charles Martel, and we realised that we’d all come up against the same story and that we’d all reacted in the same way: we felt ashamed of being ourselves, of being Arabs.
The moment I learned that Charles Martel had driven back the Arabs from Poitiers, was a founding moment for me. It was the point when I realised that I was an Arab, and that things were going to be tough. I understood that a story was being told about us which I had no control over, and all I knew about it was that it wasn’t positive. From then on, I thought that I could turn Charles Martel into a character; I didn’t know whether he would be a ghost or a monster. But just like I was caught up in the narrative of a guy who had driven back an invasion, I realised that Martel himself was also a prisoner of this narrative! So he became an accomplice for my heroine and a vehicle for me to talk about racism, through a genre film rather than turning the movie into some kind of discourse film.
The appearance of Charles Martel in the film also shows how history conditions the present.
Exactly, there’s a clash between history and stories and who’s telling them. I wanted each of the characters to produce their own story. Producing stories helps us escape from socially assigned roles. History is the ultimate method of shaping people’s imaginaries.
Does your couple, Amel and Amor, offer up a rarely seen romantic dynamic in cinema?
In the collective imaginary, Arab couples are often defined by work or parenthood, there’s not even an idea of love. They’re streamlined or even sanctified; they’re not rough or complicated, which is ultimately a pretty dehumanising image. I also wanted a really passionate and desirable cinematic couple. How is Arab masculinity depicted in French cinema? Arab men are either crushed or demonised. Arab women are either all about sacrifice or in need of being saved. But where’s desire in all that?
Do your characters often serve a purpose rather than being people?
Yes, I wanted them to embody lyricism in order to make them universal. I realise that the distance a naturalistic approach can create disappears when you include a bit of lyricism. They’re not just “immigrant parents”, they’re Amor and Amel. This shift towards the universal is almost a transgression: you have to justify it. At a script reading, someone said: “The character of Amel is unbearable, he spits in the soup.” But why should she be nice all the time? Do immigrant characters have to be perfect for us to like them? I got the impression that people felt uncomfortable moving away from archetypes. It reminded me of the expectations people sometimes have of someone like me. I’m fully aware that my film isn’t middle-class in its form. Often, with films exploring immigration, people say they’re full of delicacy, as if that’s a good thing. I wasn’t interested in delicacy, I wanted a working-class film.
(Translated from French)
