Embuscade Films
Director Miryam Charles confronts a traumatic situation in this dreamlike retelling of past, present and future.
Directed by: Miryam Charles
Year: 2022
Country: Canada
Length: 75 minutes
Bridgeport, January 17, 2008. A fourteen year old girl named Tessa is found hanging in her bedroom. The autopsy reports that, against all expectations, hadn’t died by suicide. Tessa’s family is in shock. Ten years later, her cousin Miryam Charles remembers her and looks at her life. What happened? What could’ve happened? And what should’ve happened? These are the questions that she asks in a haunting and deeply emotional imagined biography of a girl who died too soon.
Cette Maison opens with a poem that’ll haunt you for the rest of the film and far after. In the opening scene of the film, we hear a female voice say: ‘My heart is heavy, I can’t take it anymore. I must lay down on the ground. I must leave it. Let it sink to the bottom of the sea so that it drifts to Haiti. We have to go back, together, like a little girl and her mother.’ The desire of a girl wanting to go back to her homeland is expressed, which holds huge weight in the story of Tessa and her family.
We see Tessa, a girl who had been raped and murdered at the age of fourteen. However, the Tessa we see in front of us is older than fourteen. She’s around the age she would’ve been in the current day and age, had she still been here. But this version of Tessa is portrayed by Haitian-Canadian actress Shelby Jean-Baptiste. Through Jean-Baptiste we get a sense of who Tessa would be right now and what her dreams would’ve been like, even with herself knowing she wouldn’t be there. How would she want to be remembered and what would she think of the mark she left on the people who remained?
Through reenactments of the aftermath of Tessa’s death we get a glimpse of what life would’ve been like, had the spirit of this girl still lingered around. There’s something cathartic in seeing a girl console the mother who’s grieving her and to see her noticing how much her family continues to care about her and think about her all the time. This produces strong images, such as the girl attending her own autopsy and funeral, scared how she’ll be perceived by others. But even in this reality, the family has to come to terms with the fact that their beloved Tessa isn’t around anymore, at least not in the way she used to be.
There’s also a glimpse into the past, before the accident. Charles looks at a reality in which her family didn’t move from Canada, a place where they didn’t feel home, to the United States, where her cousin’s life ended. Dreams are shown of a trip to Haiti, the place where the family originates from and where many Haitians in the diaspora still dream of, even if it’s not always close to the current state of the country.
Through this personal and intimate story, Cette Maison shows us how in cinema everything is possible. It may not always be healing, but it can guide us giving certain events that happened in our lives a place by letting us look at reality from all sorts of perspectives. People can be brought back, memories can be documented and altered, and one girl can continue to live for as long as she wants, on film.
Cette Maison premiered at the 2022 Berlinale film Festival as part of the Forum selection.
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