There is very little let-up in Jose Maria Cabral’s gruelling drama, Parsley, which screens this week as part of the Oldenburg Film Festival. Set during one of the darkest periods of Dominican history, the film takes place in the midst of the so-called ‘Parsley massacre’ which took place in October of 1937, when dictator Rafael Trujillo ordered the slaughter of all Haitians living in the Dominican Republic’s north-western region. Almost the entire Haitian population was either killed or forced to flee across the border over the course of six barbaric days. Restricting its focus to one woman and her family, the film presents a heart-stopping, but humanising tale positioned against a brutal and bloody canvas.
There is only a brief and subtle warning of what is to come in the opening few minutes of the film. After taking part in a funeral procession, the heavily-pregnant Marie (Cyndie Lundy) is cooking, chatting, and laughing with members of her local community. At one moment, she overhears her Dominican husband, Frank (Ramon Emilio Candelario) being warned by his military brother German (Pavel Marcano) that ‘El Jefe’ – the Dominican leader, Trujillo – wants all Haitians out. He explains that the army will come armed with a shibboleth, a phrase whose pronunciation can denote between groups of people: “any Negro who mispronounces the word ‘parsley’ is screwed.” Quite the extent of the retribution for the Creole accent is left unsaid but is quickly and violently conveyed that night. A fire in a nearby settlement prompts Frank to go in search of his older sons, while Marie and her sister-in-law, Salome (Attabeyra Endarnacion) have to navigate a hellish landscape of machete-wielding murders.
Cyndie Lundy has a role that could quite easily be pretty thankless as she stumbles, with a baby bump hampering her movement and sapping her strength, from fiery cataclysm to brazen murder squad. Where a traditional quest narrative provides a variety of different challenges and obstacles to overcome, here Marie must just find different ways to avoid finding herself at the end of a soldier’s gory blade. However, Lundy does manage to do a lot with a little. While the pressures placed on Marie can feel somewhat overwhelming as she is battered from pillar to post, she expresses her fragility without undermining a highly necessary steely resolve. When her contractions start and she implores an elder to tell her how to delay the baby’s arrival, so it is not born in the middle of such bloodshed, she is also only minutes from gritting her teeth through an eye-watering moment of self-mutilation to secure their survival.
All of this is presented in a fairly conventional dramatic style. There are admittedly a few moments in which things creak a little – the odd instance of lower production value rearing its head and in a couple of scenes the heightened emotion of the drama is a little beyond the performers – but on the whole, the film is delivered admirably. This is extended to some beautiful cinematography that is especially striking in certain sequences in which Marie roams the landscape. While her nocturnal journey to reunite with her husband and survive until morning might play out like a nightmarish journey into hell, often lit by the flicker of ominous firelight, it is also often eerily beautiful. Mist drifts through the trees and Lundy’s form is silhouetted against them. The first ever silhouette was supposedly drawn to depict an absent lover and here it perhaps hints at Marie as a wraith, a ghost, a wandering spirit.
Cabral has spoken explicitly about the decision to tell this particular story as a way of drawing attention to an often-overlooked historical event and highlighting contemporary Dominican-Haitian relations. In giving even this grimmest of narratives a somewhat unreal aspect at times, he casts Marie and her plight as if they were part of local lore, a story in folk tradition to be passed down through the ages. Although its opening 75 minutes might seem like an attempt to convince you otherwise, this is also not a film devoid of hope. While its bittersweet denouement may not be able to counter the horrifying facts of the preceding hour, it offers some sort of route forward; one that understands how important it is to revisit the past, even its blackest of nights.
Director: Jose Maria Cabral
Cast: Cyndie Lundy, Ramon Emilio Candelario, Attabeyra Endarnacion
Screenplay: Arturo Arango, Jose Maria Cabral, Nurielis Duarte, Joaquin Octavio Gonzalez, Alan Gonzalez, Xenia Rivery
Producer: Rafael Elias Munoz
Cinematography: Hernan Herrera
Editing: Nacho Ruiz Capillas
Music: Jorge Magaz
Production Design: Wilhem Perez
Production company: Lantica Media, Tabula Rasa Films (Dominican Republic)
Venue: Oldenburg Film Festival
In Spanish
85 minutes
