Nanny Review: This Thoughtprovoking Film Makes A Horror Of The Immigrant Experience
© I Provided by Caption : Anna plays Deep Nanny ??? Photo: Courtesy of Prime Video?? 2022 Shark Mouth, LLC. Movie Nanny Still Amazon Prime Provider: Via Prime Video Source: NNNY_UHD-PROD_221_NF51-20_2398_E Copyright: ? 2022 Shark Mouth, LLC.The nanny is a great source of danger (think princes waving), as jealousy and incompatibility come into play. But writer-director Nikiatu Jusu's feature, the first terror work to win the Grand Jury Prize at this year's Sundance Film Festival, is hardly a genre classic, leaning more toward national labor market horror. to be scare
Aisha (Anna Diop) is an undocumented Senegalese worker in New York who starts working as a nanny for a wealthy white family on the Upper East Side, hoping to save enough money to bring her own daughter, Lami, to the United States. . . Amy (Michelle Monaghan) is the boss, a confused progressive liberal having a good time, trying to pretend she and Ayesha have the same problems at work at the boys' club ("You know how it goes," she quips), then avoiding paying Ayesha. For his next overtime pay..
Her husband, Adam (Morgan Spector), a roving eye photojournalist who tries to bond with Ayesha for his unique insight into the immigrant experience, photographing only a few black people in conflict zones. The kindness of rich families is fake. Ayesha asks to pay for her book and spend the night without warning. And when she sees her daughter serving Rose (Rose Dekker) homemade jollof rice instead of Amy's pre-prepared Tupperware meal, her boss's cute face immediately cracks. Jusue's mother, an immigrant from Sierra Leone, worked as a nanny for a time, and Jusue's intimate knowledge of the subtle ways in which this dynamic plays out (the look between Aisha and the maid, the red flash of the nanny cam) results in a richly detailed, playful film.
As Ayesha works long hours, having nightly video calls with her son, the tension subsides when her missing son starts showing up. "I have no life, they are mine," he told a friend. Dreams are tormented by visions of drowning; Sometimes he thought he saw a huge spider crawling on his bedroom wall. He read the story of West African legend Rose, the spider Anansi, sometimes seen as a god of history, but here intentionally as a symbol of slave resistance. "The soul is not always kind," Ayesha's new boyfriend's grandmother tells her. Was the ghost trying to warn Aisha about something? Or has the toxic injustice of your circumstances invited evil spirits into your life?
Ultimately, too much happens and the various narrative threads – supernatural, domestic thriller, family drama – remain largely disjointed and unresolved, which feels unsatisfying. It's incredibly sad, very late and incredibly landing on the closing credits, which is a shame.
Still, it's a rich and intriguing film with plenty of suspense (thankfully, only vaguely offensive musical entries), much of which is conveyed by Diop's generous, layered performance. She is not only a caregiver, not only a mother, but she is afraid that the complex human life is too dangerous, but she is trying to build a romantic and other life for herself. Jusu doesn't just terrorize the immigrant experience; He gave him a little humanity.
On Amazon Prime from December 16.
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