Éric Caravaca is the French actor and director who has starred in films such as Philippe Garrel’s Lover for a Day, Patrice Chéreau’s His Brother and The Officer’s Ward by François Dupeyron – to whom this film is dedicated. It is a sad, thoughtful, if slight piece of work, a 67-minute cine-memoir about his family, personal myths and memories.
It was worked on over a long period: Caravaca’s dad, a wary interview subject, died during filming. Caravaca’s parents, Angela and Gilberto, were from Morocco but came to France in the early 60s, when Éric and his brother Olivier were born. But there was a family mystery: their sister Christine died in infancy in Morocco, in circumstances his parents were always reluctant to discuss. Her grave, in “Plot 35” in Casablanca’s French cemetery has had its photo removed. The official story was that the little girl died of maladie bleue, or blue baby syndrome – but it was more complicated than that. She had Down’s syndrome, making her liable to this condition. Caravaca almost, but not quite, gets his mother to admit this on camera – though his father is reasonably frank.
This was an era in which shame irrationally attached to the condition, and Caravaca’s mother was brought up in an atmosphere of denial and avoidance. The trauma of Christine’s birth and death coincided with the tumult of Moroccan independence; thecouple’s need to escape had an international dimension. As Caravaca puts it: “A child dies at the same time as colonial civilisation.” An interesting, reflective film.
