I watched this movie with a lawyer- ep 01 - KOUTE VWA

I watched this movie with a lawyer- a short series of movie reviews and discussions

KOUTE VWA

I generally watch movies with (a) lawyer(s), it is not that I need a lawyer because of my nefarious activities, but an happenstance of knowing a couple of lawyers back from my drinking days.  Lawyers are the real version of how Donal Trump imagine migrants behave: you befriend one lawyer and give them a little life real estate and they call all their lawyer friends to join in, soon your neighborhood is full or lawyers, you’re drowning in lawyer talk, they don’t know how to cook so they empty your fridge or force you to cook for them, they dress in their bulky yet expensive suits even on week-ends, and all they want to do is talk about cases they cannot tell you anything about so they build the most complexest metaphors, similes and obscure artefacts to anonymize and sanitize their speech to the point it become inane non-sensical boredom fodder that you have to pretend to both be exciting about and understand (not in that order).

Episode 01: Kouté Vwa

“This woman has been through a lot”. It is with these word that my companion in watching Kouté Vwa greeted the first appearance of The Mother. I payed particular heed to their words, as my companion was a lawyer who spent the bulk of their career in criminal courts, and whose daily bread is to delve in the worst acts people can do to each other (cf. Nota Bene). 

In “Kouté vwa” a boy—soon to become a man— has been murdered at a party.  Rather than the forensic approach of a TV crime documentary that would focus on the act, the film focuses on the consequences of the act on a Trinity of those who remain: 

The Mother, 

The Best Friend, 

and The Nephew.

For what seems to be a dozen of years, the film witnesses the nature and the evolution of the un-fixable grief from its three-point of views. The Mother is an obvious choice, she has lost a child, an act whose magnitude is barely comprehensible for whomever has not been through it. Yet she stands, she stands where most would have plowed or broken, the definition of what we call in Martinique a Poto Mitan, a woman who can endure it all. So very often because they were never granted and consequently never grant themselves the time to be hurt: they have too much to carry, the whole society would collapse if they didn’t stand. 

And even now, as a grandmother she continues to carry, first The Nephew. Probably the most unexpected addition to the Trinity as he has never met his uncle, yet his life is haunted by the departed. The Nephew’s addition should be welcomed as an illustration of how (unhealed) trauma is un-circumventable and is transmitted from generation to generation. A reminder that healing oneself is both an act of individual self-centered salvation but should be viewed as a civic act, borderline social activism: we need to heal so we don’t pass the burden to others, particularly significant others. Second The Mother carries The Best Friend most notably when he breaks down in tears, she is the one to console him, she, who lost a son…  

Writing this article, I cannot help but think about what Kouté Vwa would have been had the movie focused solely on The Mother.

The film shines by its absences: first, the departed, whose presence haunts the movie, so much that I felt the need to define all the protagonist through their relations to him (mother of, best friend of, nephew of). Second, The Sister who only appears in the archives and supposedly on phone calls with the Nephew. Third, the murderer who, like all parties mentioned so far, must also live with the consequences of his act. 

And finally: reasons and explanations. Kouté Vwa does well to mostly avoid trying to find reasons and explanations to what is ultimately an unreasonable act, as one that defies reason, thus does not have reasons: the taking of a life.