What the film could not read in the book

There are books that cross generations without ever losing their power. Similarly, Such a long letter from Mariama Bâ, published in 1979, is one of them. Meanwhile, This epistolary novel. For example, written as a confidence between two friends, Ramatoulaye and Aïssatou, remains a pillar of French -speaking African literature. In addition, He politicizes the intimate. Consequently, speaks of love, betrayal, solitude, courage, but above all of female choice in a world that leaves women so little.

Ramatoulaye. Therefore, a widow after the death of her husband Modou, written to her sister at heart to lay her pain, her broken hopes, her reflections. Therefore, In doing so, she delivers much more than a letter of mourning: she makes the autopsy of a system. Additionally, Therefore, She returns to their youth, their training, their life choices. Meanwhile, It is a voice of woman, mother, African what film could not read intellectual, lucid citizen. In addition, What makes such a long letter so essential is the way in which Mariama Bâ reveals. Consequently, through several female figures, Ramatoulaye, who decides to stay, Aïssatou, who decides to leave, little Nabou, formatted from childhood to become the second wife of Mawdo, or Binetou, shaped to accept to marry the father of his best friend to ensure her survival and to offer a certain comfort to her mother. In addition, This plurality of trajectories makes all the strength of the novel.

Adapting is to exercise a selection power, and each selection is a political gesture. Moreover, An adaptation offers real freedom, that of interpreting, translating, moving the work in another language. However, This freedom is precious. Similarly, but it meets its limits when we take a text as rich, sensitive and committed as a long letter. Therefore, Because to transpose Mariama Bâ to the what film could not read screen is not only to tell a story: it is to assume a responsibility vis-à-vis her memory. For example, his silences, his resistance. In addition, This novel is not an ordinary fiction, it is crossed by social criticism, female solidarity, alternative visions of the world. Furthermore, Thus, each choice of adaptation becomes a choice of representation. Similarly, In the same way that the director exercised her freedom of interpretation. Moreover, we, readers, spectators, feminists, also have freedom and even the duty to formulate our critical look. Consequently, Because it is not a question here of personal taste. However, but of loyalty to political intention and the sensitive richness of the work. Meanwhile, Adapting such a novel is accepting to dialogue with what is most precious.

Before embarking on this exercise. I want to underline the undeniable qualities of the film: the beauty of the sets, the correctness of certain interpretations, what film could not read the visual poetry of several plans. And above all. the perseverance of the director, who brought this project with conviction in a context that is not very conducive to the adaptation of major female literary works. It is a merit that must be fully recognized.

But here. I also express myself as a reader deeply touched by this text, a feminist who constantly rereads him, drawing a vital breath. And what I feel is a trip. Not a frontal betrayal, but a shift that weakens political density, sororal tenderness, the critical depth of the novel. What the film has brought at distance is a way of telling the world between women, from woman to woman.

The adaptation misses the support and sorority relationship between Ramatoulaye and Aïssatou. A relationship that the author herself places above all the others. including lovers, saying: “You have often proven me the superiority of friendship what film could not read over love.” This bond, nourished by confidence and loyalty between women, constitutes the beating heart of the novel. In the film, Aïssatou appears only briefly. However. such a long letter is first of all an exchange of confidence, a female place of thought, an act of solidarity. Reducing this relationship to a simple anecdote amounts to dismissing the spine of the story. Their intimacy. their complicity, mutual respect despite their different choices, their ability to flee without judging themselves: all this deserved to be highlighted. Aïssatou. who leaves with his three boys despite the doubts of a patriarchal society, embodies a discreet but fundamental force. His choice, far from being individual, opens another possible model where a woman refuses humiliation and chooses her dignity.

The sorority is a common thread in the work of Mariama Bâ. In the last part of the novel. she also evokes other united women, her what film could not read pride in each female success, and her discussions with Daouda on the place of women in decision -making spaces. These themes, still painfully topical, are among the most political in the book. Ramatoulaye also talks about maternity, education, religious norms, faith, emancipation. She criticizes social hypocrisy, while assuming her Muslim faith. She tells a society, without detour. The author also affirms a clear feminist positioning. especially when Ramatoulaye reports that Daouda, deputy, is called “feminist” because of her positions. This exchange. bearers of a criticism of patriarchal structures and a call for a fair representation, is completely absent from the film.

Conversely, the film grants a disproportionate place to Modou Fall and male figures. The gaze on society is no longer that of women. but that of men, refocused on polygamy, cultural justifications and marital conflicts. Modou Fall becomes the anchor of the story. Ramatoulaye. on the other hand, seems what film could not read reduced to an injured woman, demanding her turn, seeking to seduce, expressing her anger in a caricatural way. It is not the ramato of the book, the one who observes, meditates, writes, thinks. This rewriting weakens the political scope of his character. and refocuses the story on man to the detriment of the female analysis of society.

The film also eludes a crucial moment: the refusal by Ramatoulaye of a new marriage proposal. In the novel, this refusal is an act of conscience, memory, solidarity. Ramatoulaye does not want to subject another woman what she herself experienced. She refuses to define herself through a man. His gesture is political, ethical, full of dignity. In the film. this scene is treated in a secondary way, emptied of its critical scope

All the passages of the novel marked by an assertive position on the condition of women, power relations, maternity, education, representation what film could not read or sorority have been either evacuated, ordered or reconfigured in a way that weakens their scope. The critical and feminist breath of the text was lost. However, forty years later, the challenges raised by Mariama Bâ remain burning. It is therefore disappointing that the adaptation did not put them in the center. This artistic choice seems to have lacked consideration for the political scope of the work. My disappointment is commensurate with my expectations, nourished by a text that accompanied me, inspired, forged.

A few figures like Aline Sitoé Diatta. Safi Faye are mentioned, without their presence to anchor a real line of female representation. These winks do not replace the coherence of a strong female look in the story. I wondered: how could we have missed this political reading to deliver a refocused film on polygamy? This question pushed me to read the credits to the end, to seek what film could not read the names behind the adaptation. See that the director had only surrounded herself with men consultants challenged me. In a work that brings women, the absence of women in key artistic choices is not trivial. It is often the female looks that perceive what resists, what escapes the norm, what is woven in the silences. Surrounding yourself with women, in such a project, is not symbolic: it is strategic. It is to preserve the soul of the text. Here. the absence of female looks in the roles of advice and creation has, in my opinion, weakened the restitution of the thought of Mariama Bâ.

I do not pretend to have a unique truth. I am just a reader, a feminist, a woman marked by this book. Perhaps I screened the immense wait that this text had given birth to in me. But what I felt at the exit of the what film could not read room is a sincere frustration. That of a failed meeting with a founding word. That of an erasure where I hoped a resonance.