The Old Sorceress and the Valet
Leaving August 31
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1h 21m
Directed by Julius-Amédée Laou • 1987 • France
Starring Jenny Alpha, Robert Liensol
Suffused with a sense of dreamlike, magical unreality, Julius-Amédée Laou’s singular, strikingly shot debut feature peers into the relationship between an elderly West Indian couple (Jenny Alpha and Robert Liensol) who have been living in Paris since 1921. Over the course of a long, rambling walk through the city, they bicker, reminisce, and reflect on their lives spent in service of white people: he as a servant, she as a practitioner of black magic for white clients. What emerges is an alternately wounding, tender, and trenchantly funny meditation on the diasporic experience.
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