Biguine French Movie Review

Title-Biguine Director- Jacques Boumedil Year- 2005 Type- Drama Main actors: Micheline Mona and Max Telephe 1) The main characters granddaughter narrates the story over the radio. Hermansia and Tiquitaque travel to St-Pierre with a group of other plantation workers looking for a new life and they come to a cliff and see the volcano and the harbor. They walk around the city amazed by urban the atmosphere. They are particularly interested in the jewelry and other material goods that are sold in the city center. 2) Hermansia – Hermansia is a black plantation worker who moves to St-Pierre to pursue her passion to be a singer.
At first she is reluctant to embrace the city but eventually her music becomes popular and up lifts her community. Her lyrics capture her desire to live life to the fullest and rise up from the oppression the black community faces from that French and Europeans on the island. Tiquitaque- Tiquitaque is Hermansia’s husband and is also a musician. He is excited to be in a new city but disappointed that wealthy individuals will not hire him and his wife to perform at their social functions. The upper class does not like the rural black music that the two play, especially the drums which were popular among the slaves in the plantations.
However, Tiquitaqu learns to play the clarinet and develops his own style of music that is popular among the upper class and lower class alike. The Creole music is high tempo and inspires movement and dance. 3) The film takes place in St-Pierre, Martinique. 4) At first Hermansia and Tiquitaque are not successful as musicians so Hermansia works as a maid and Tiquitaque works on the docks. Hermansia buys Tiquitaque a clarinet and he develops his own style of music and is hired play at parties. At these parties he normally would play the waltz and polka and other European style music.

Tiquitaque starts to play a style of Creole on his clarinet that inspires people around the town and unites their communities. Their Creole music, he and his wife perform at cabarets, which symbolizes freedom for the repressed lower class people. People start to enjoy the music and whites and blacks come together to dance. Their music becomes extremely popular in the city. At the end of the movie, the volcano next to the city erupts and symbolizes the new culture that is developing in Martinique in the ninetieth century. 5) Overall, I did not enjoy this film because the plot was not well developed and the movie didn’t have any action.
The majority of the movie was listening to the couple sing. Although, the music was beautiful the movie did not have much substance. Therefore, I would not recommend this movie to anyone. 6) I learned a lot about Martinique’s culture while watching this movie. I saw many landmarks in the city of St-Pierre including the volcano. I also listened to Creole music for the first time and I enjoyed its upbeat rhythm. Additionally, Martinique was French colony in the ninetieth century and its main export was sugar. Thus, many slaves where brought from Africa to work on the plantations, which resulted in a large black community on the island.