She is hired as a household servant by a humorless blonde thirtysomething French woman (Anne-Marie Jelinek) who takes her from Dakar to her household in Antibes. There, she is isolated, verbally abused, unpaid, and made to toil throughout the day. Also there is her employer's meek husband (Robert Fontaine), who does little to stop his wife's mistreatment of Diouana, though he seems to disapprove of it.
One day, Diouana has finally had enough, and refuses to work anymore. It gets worse for her from there.
How others will see it. This pseudo-documentary struck a chord with those few liberal cinephiles who saw it during the 1960s. It picked up a couple of minor festival awards, and was then forgotten. It was the first feature film for director Ousmane Sembene, whose career continued fitfully (though not without recognition) until his death in 2007.
Today at imdb.com, Black Girl has a respectable 6.6K user votes, and a fairly high user rating of 7.4 out of 10. The user reviews are predominantly positive, though diminished by the film's austere production values.
How I felt about it. The story presented here is fictional, but undoubtedly inspired by the treatment of one or African immigrant maids, as known by the director, Ousmane Sembene. In fact, mistreatment of female African servants in wealthy countries continues to this day, and is as big a problem as it was six decades ago. Here is a New York Times article about the deaths of hundreds of African maids in Saudi Arabia, among others who were physically or sexually abused or starved, in addition to the slavery and verbal abuse suggested here.
Black Girl is reportedly the first feature film directed by a black man in the Saharan region of Africa. So, it is a minor landmark in cinema, though its greatest gift to us is its message: power should be demonstrated with kindness instead of cruelty. I don't see this film in racial terms. The meaning is closer to that of Dogville (2003).
Some people, when given the opportunity to take advantage of someone, will do so with malice. Such people might not be inherently evil. Perhaps they are selfish to the point of self-absorption. They don't seem to know or care that they end up despised by those around them. One does wonder, though, why her husband continues to endure her. Is it simply because she is attractive for her age?
Some have criticized the acting of the amateur cast. Obviously, Sembene did not have the money to hire established actors. The film would not exist without amateurs, the director himself arguably among them.
But the acting here is good. Even the young boy acts well. And it all unfolds credibly, with the exception of the husband's final-reel trip to Dakar to give Diouana's wages to her mother. The husband would never have had either the courage or the volition to make that journey and enter that black neighborhood, knowing how he might be received there. He would have just pocketed the money instead.