(Belgium, 90 min.)
Dir. Patrice Toye, Writ. Patrice Toye, Irina Vandewijer
Starring: Line Pillet, Charlotte De Bruyne, Dolores
Bouckaert, Ineke Nijssen
Audiences affected by the story behind last year’s Oscar
nominee Philomena will want to see
Belgium’s Little Black Spiders this
week at Ottawa’s European Union Film Festival. Perhaps closer in tone to, say, The Magdalene Sisters than to the
cheery, yet devastating Philomena, Little Black Spiders tells an affecting
tale about young girls cast away from society and stripped of the joy of
motherhood. These young women might need some guidance, but, like the young
Philomena Lee, Katarina (Line Pillet), longs to keep her baby even though she
agrees unawares to let the nuns at the convent give her baby away once she
delivers it. This poetic film by director Patrice Toye, one of several female
filmmakers repped at EUFF, is a moving coming-of-age tale.
If Philomena tells of the heartache that comes after losing one’s child, then Little Black Spiders dives deep into the painful waiting game of anticipating a birth when one knows the child will be lost. Katarina, renamed Katya in the convent to keep the girls anonymous, longs for the baby in her belly since she herself is an orphan and wants to create the family she never had. Like the other girls in her company, though, she’s fully aware of the life growing inside her, since their stowaway in their attic of the convent leaves them with nothing to do except watch their pregnancies come full term—their guardian, Sister Simone (Ineke Nijssen), staunchly keeps their existence a secret from the many other residents of the countryside estate. With nothing else to do, these young women—girls, really—find friendship in the unlikeliest of places as they bond in their shared exile.
Toye conveys the restlessness of life in the country for the
bored young girls who receive no guidance other than reprimands and curt
lessons on the sins of the flesh that really do little to offer sexual
education or tips on parenting. Little
Black Spiders empowers these anxious young women by allowing them to
explore their own hopes and desires through plays and games. These little
dramas show the girls both as sexual beings and as innocents struggling to find
a balance between authority over their bodies and the authority held over their
own sexuality by the repressive Sister Simone. The plays evoke references to
literature and folklore that situate the girls’ coming-of-age into greater
odysseys of growth and awakening, like James Joyce, while interludes of rock
inject a rebellious spirit that defies their containment.
The titular “little black spiders” of the film appear in one
of the film’s anthemic soundtrack choices as well as in one skin-crawling
sequence in which Katarina observes her peers lying peacefully in the quiet
forest and imagines their private areas ravaged by insects. Both appearances of
the spiders are effective and unnerving flourishes that place these girls in a
struggle to escape. The luminous cinematography, meanwhile, has a flare for
innocence with how crisply it captures the sunlight in the forest, while
fleeting cuts to grainier film stock situates this poetic odyssey within the
true stories that inspired it. The lyrical boldness of Toye’s direction sits
Katya and her friends in the frustrating in-between place that bridges youth
and adolescence, and Little Black Spiders
looks fondly on the girls who are forced to grow up so quickly, yet
infantilized by a cruel system.
Rating: ★★★½ (out of ★★★★★)
Little Black Spiders screens at the European Union Film Festival on Thursday, Nov. 27 at 7:00 pm at Library and Archives Canada, 395 Wellington St.
The European Union
Film Festival runs Nov. 13-30.
Please visit www.cfi-icf.ca for more information on this
year’s festival.
More coverage of the European Union Film Festival may be found here.
More coverage of the European Union Film Festival may be found here.
