Freda

In Freda, Gessica Geneus creates a deeply affecting drama out of a small family headed by a mother. Her two daughters and a son make up the remaining members of the family and the cast of main characters. The son, never really home, adds little to the plot, the relationship between mother and daughters being Geneus’s focus.

Another relationship, between a people and their country (in this case, Haiti) receives some treatment but Freda is not an explicitly political film. It is political only in the sense that the family is the bedrock of the country—and the one is inextricable from the other. The country’s values become the family’s values, which in turn determine the political climate. The news coming from Haiti already tells of a country perennially on the verge of implosion, both politically and geographically. Geneus intercuts real-life protest scenes with her own narrative. You can tell the difference aesthetically between these scenes and the small-scaled rumbling in the household holding the film’s narrative.

The film establishes its title character Freda (Nehemie Bastien) as an idealist early on. Although her family lives in a state of not-quite-poverty but close, there are certain things she won’t do—unlike her sister Esther (Djanaina Francois) who is light-skinned and enjoys the attention of several male characters over the course of the film. Now and then, Esther indulges her fascination and she’s not squeamish about stealing from one of her white and relatively well-off lovers.

Freda will listen to Esther’s tales but she has eyes only for her boyfriend Yeshua (Jean Jean), an artist who no longer lives in Haiti. We learn he left the country after a stray bullet almost killed him while he was at home in bed. He returns for an exhibition of his art, but also for Freda. While interactions between the sisters provide the domestic anchor of the narrative, Yeshua and Freda’s relationship and conversations cover their country’s national misery. The only way is out, says Yeshua, who lives in Santo Domingo. Freda wants to stay with her family. Unstoppable conviction meets immovable resolve. It is Yeshua’s position that has led to immigration policies getting tighter in developed countries, but Freda’s resolve has yet to improve the lot of poorer nations. Love, as it turns out, will not conquer all.

If this kind of push and pull is typical of the young, in Geneus’s telling older persons are not exempt from human folly, although whether it is really folly depends on your perspective. Mother Jeannette (an outstanding Fabiola Remy in a remarkable ensemble), who one might expect to exert some kind of moral influence on her children, conspicuously supports Esther’s lusty adventures. But Geneus, who is credited as sole screenwriter, doesn’t judge her. Indeed, a little past halfway into the film, there seems to be a method to Jeannette’s behaviour. Simply put, how can a woman in a poor country care for three adult children and herself if her only source of income is the small shop in front of her small home? Whatever one might think of high morals, you can’t take them to the bank.

Thus, it is wholly appropriate that this near-masterpiece of a film should end on a shot of a face streaming with tears. That may be a devastating conclusion and a suitably elegiac ode to a country and a family on the cusp of ruin, but the film itself is a wonderful debut for a director everyone should pay attention to.