The horror of the immigrant experience is often portrayed quite literally in American cinema — realistic, shaky camera movements; stark, muted colors; sad, tired people with their eyes wide, speaking only sparingly as they take all the abuse capitalism has to offer. The directors who traffic in these stories often do so from a place of detachment, able to register the suffering of their subjects while ignoring the many layers of their humanity.
And then, once in a while, audiences get something that not only depicts the immigrant experience but also provides us with a lens for which to (at least partially) understand the emotional nuances of physically living in one place while one’s heart resides in another. Leaving your homeland is a series of small deaths, compounding into a general sense of mourning the life you could have had if you stayed. Nikyatu Jusu’s debut feature, Nanny, is about coping with that mourning in the hopes that a new life will lead to healing.
Nanny
The Bottom Line A deft and sensitive horror-inflected immigrant story.
The film tells the story of Aisha (Anna Diop), a Senegalese nanny for Rose (Rose Decker), the daughter of a wealthy white New York couple with a strained marriage. Amy (Michelle Monaghan) is the prototypical upper-crust working mom whose control issues and general anxiety make it difficult for Aisha to do her job. When Rose refuses to eat the bland, hermetically sealed health food her mother leaves for her, Aisha begins feeding her jollof rice on the sly, knowing that Amy would never allow it. Though her husband Adam (Morgan Spector) is around, it’s Amy who calls the shots, demanding every moment of Aisha’s time as well as emotional support. Adam lives up to her disdain, disappearing frequently and only showing interest in Rose when given the opportunity to flirt with Aisha. Worn out from her job and fed up with Adam, Amy can’t even seem to manage paying Aisha on time.
There are moments early in the film where it seems as though the focus will be Aisha’s relationship with the white couple, but Jusu frames them as intruders in Aisha’s life, distracting her from her own needs and desires. Aisha needs to get paid on time, not just for rent, but mainly to save money in anticipation for her young son Lamine’s arrival to the country. In the meantime, he’s staying with her family, with only phone calls and video chats connecting them between continents. She’s a mother on a mission, and her job as nanny is only a means to an end.
It’s refreshing to see Aisha repeatedly establish boundaries between herself and the troubled couple, refusing to fall prey to the artificial trappings of their lifestyle. She can see their misery and the emptiness of their marriage very clearly, even in the midst of her own emotional turmoil. She only yearns for what is hers — her son, whom she refers to as her “greatest work.”
Dripping in aquatic imagery, Nanny is a film that moves freely through life and dream space, favoring deep blue-tinged darkness. It’s the kind of film where the viewer loses sense of time itself, mesmerized by the beauty and melancholy of each shot. Jusu first honed this style in her debut short film, Suicide By Sunlight, a subtly beautiful tale of a struggling Black mother trying to regain custody of her children while hiding a violent secret. Nanny builds on the themes of motherhood, focusing on the pain of being separated from your child while having to take care of another one. As Aisha spends more time with her white employers and their daughter, her identity as a mother and connection to her child begin to slip away.
With the company of other West African immigrants and a new love Malik (Sinqua Walls), Aisha tries to stay rooted in her culture and take steps toward the life she wants. As Malik, Walls is charming and easy-going; we see Aisha beginning to relax and enjoy her time in the city. Diop and Walls have lovely chemistry, but the film’s most impactful connection is between her and veteran actress Leslie Uggams, who plays Malik’s grandmother Kathleen. As Aisha begins to have visions, disrupting both her sleep and waking hours, Kathleen uses her spiritual intuition to help the protagonist understand what they mean. Two figures from West African folklore, the trickster Anansi and the water spirit Mami Wata, take over her mind, slowly eroding her sanity. Aisha begins to see spiders — Anansi’s most popular form — often accompanied by her mind playing tricks on her, distorting moments of her reality. Mami Wata is much more direct, pulling Aisha underwater and making her feel as if she’s drowning. But despite the violence of their methods, Kathleen asserts that they are simply trying to send a message — a message that will likely have a devastating effect on the young mother’s life.
With Nanny, Jusu crafts a contemplative, thematically rich story that deftly explores the emotional and spiritual costs of leaving your homeland behind for an uncertain future in a strange land. Diop is elegant and understated as Aisha, a loving mother with quiet strength, commanding presence and an unbreakable bond to Senegal and the conditions that made her. It’s a perfect marriage of director and star, with Jusu providing a worthy showcase for Diop’s talents as a leading lady.
The film’s skilled usage of folklore is an inspired breath of fresh air in a horror landscape so often uninterested in the African diaspora. Mami Wata is an especially dazzling image, regal, sensual and foreboding all at once. At its root, Nanny is a story about the otherworldly power of cultural connection and the ways it may guide you when you’ve lost your way.