Enshrined in superstition

‘A French Filmmaker’s Perspective’ film festival closed with the screening of a film about behavioral disorders.

KARACHI:

The second day of the Film festival at The Alliance Française titled ‘A French Filmmaker’s Perspective’ started with the ‘Art of screenplay’, a master class conducted by French filmmaker Michel Spinosa, which was attended by students, filmmakers and screenwriters. The session led to a discussion with the director and screening of his movie SON EPOUSE (His wife).

The film revolves around Gracie, a young Tamil, who has suffered from a behavioral disorder since her wedding day and above that the memory of her friend Catherine, who passed away in mysterious circumstances in India, keeps on haunting her. Eventually Joseph, Catherine’s widower, decides to travel to India to meet Gracie and, perhaps, in the course of this journey make up for mistakes he made in the past. On a thematic level, the film triggers a debate between the Eastern and Western tradition of using superstition for the treatment of mental illnesses.



Spinosa, the director of the film, defines his movies as psychological thrillers or dramas. His wife is his fourth feature film out of the eight films he has directed. He was interested in psychoanalysis as a kid and that eventually transpired into his works. “It goes back to my early days. I think human existence is a mystery. Human sciences are a way to approach the mystery of what a human being is, if not resolve it. The complexity of the relationship between a man and a woman is intriguing and there are many layers to it,” said Spinosa.

As a teenager, he wanted to go to India and read a lot of Indian literature by writers such as Arundati Roy and  Salman Rushdie, along with the works of French anthropologists on India.



But it was when he visited the shrines in India that he started to observe a very different approach to treating mental illness. “When I visited three or four major shrines, I was shocked to see people in chains. They reminded me of asylums in Italy in the 70s. The patients you encounter in those shrines usually follow the same course as Gracie,” said Spinosa. He further elaborated that people mostly go to a shrine where they don’t take pills and there is definitely a lesson that can be learnt from their stories. A lot of married girls between the ages of 18 have such disorders.



“I did not see a clichéd depiction of exorcism; I saw that the filmmaker showed it with honesty and compassion. He did not impose a stereotypical foreign view of the issue,” said a member of the audience after the screening. When asked if he would make a movie in Pakistan, Spinosa replied, “It’s too early to say if I will make a movie in Pakistan since it’s my first visit here but I am happy to be here.”

Published in The Express Tribune, November 20^th, 2014.

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