‘Nanny’ Addresses The Terrifying Price of the American Dream

 

Nanny film poster.

Deceptive appearances crack beneath the calm surface in a slow simmering horror Nanny. 

The affluent white savior Amy hires freshly arrived Senegalese immigrant Aisha to take care of her daughter Rose in a clean, immaculate Tribeca penthouse. An eager Aisha plans to have her own son Lamine join her in New York. Their talks on the time-limited phone bring Aisha the most joy. Immediately, Aisha and Rose form an intense connection. Rose is adept to French and even eats much to Amy’s surprise. However, it is Aisha’s food that Rose is enjoying— not the latest food crazes that Amy has been introducing. 

When Amy’s husband Adam returns, he is absolutely cold to Amy, almost causing a humiliating spectacle. He is softer towards Rose, bringing a book on Anansi the Spider from his latest trip. His office reads more museum than personal workspace. His photographs of global activists, the books in various languages— they’re a collection of travel souvenirs and displayed wealth. While Aisha hides her struggle to provide substantial monetary support for Lamine’s journey, Adam is able to travel freely without restraint. The differing lives that Aisha and this couple lead showcase the spaces money allows them to inhabit. Amy’s continued ignorance to pay Aisha her worth and pay that worth on time begins to interfere with the couple’s manufactured politeness. Perhaps Amy believes Aisha doesn’t understand the American dollar system and pays her purely on the Senegalese exchange rate.

Aisha (Anna Diop) and Rose (Rose Decker). Image from Sundance Film Festival. DP: Rina Yang.

An overworked Aisha represents the modern Mammy, a nursemaid to a spoiled child. The longer Aisha is forced to stay in the increasingly estranged couple’s home— often overnight— the more weight the hold has on Aisha’s conscience. This well-executed tension builds to an insurmountable stress and pain beyond physical. Rose is placed high above on a hierarchy that Aisha must obey. The heartbreaking consequences of this terrible truth threatens to wholly consume Aisha. So the rule-breaking spiders crawl with defiant purpose and the surreal waters flood Aisha’s vulnerable thoughts with complicated messages. 

In the midst of the rising supernatural elements, a tenderly constructed romance blossoms between Aisha and the Tribeca penthouse bellhop Malik. The attractive pair have much in common— both raising young sons and working indentured roles. In one particularly striking scene— an appetizing predecessor to beautiful dark brown skinned bodies joining together— is that blissful car ride. The camera turns sharply on Malik driving Aisha along, Sampa The Great’s Grass Is Greener trembles in the background of a perfectly lit night. Aisha deserves a natural, unconditional love. Kind, gentle Malik— in Aisha’s age range— asks for consent, woes her, and offers support including through his grandmother Kathleen. 

Nanny writer/director Nikyatu Jusu integrates her cinematic influences with a sophisticatedly charged personal narrative that strikes the viewer’s emotional core. Firstly, Ousmane Sembène’s La Noire De and his muse Mbissine Thérèse Diop swim across the Atlantic to contemporary America; hoping to test out her waters and fulfill her dreams only to find the abject labor again. The mermaid (which is not a Eurocentric beauty form at all, more creature than seductive siren) comes from many symbolic stories and the noted emphasis on the collage painting by Wangechi Mutu (a Kenyan-American artist) stresses an underlying connection between Aisha’s unconscious demons and the never ending plight of water, this historical Black fear that reaches farther back to the days of drowning bodies. Even cinematographer Rina Yang’s breathtaking scenes of gorgeously lit Black skin were so stunning that blinking became an impossible exercise. 

The cast is led by the utterly remarkable Senegalese actress Anna Diop as Aisha— a role she was destined to become and not just because she shares a certain surname. Diop conveys the personal agonies that continue seeping into Aisha— her fear, her sorrow, her pleasure, her frustration, and her grief. She fiercely portrays a character’s internal struggle, withholds so much from everyone until the shockingly familiar breaking point. Sinqua Falls is given more than the average Black male love interest. Malik is still reeling with regret over the memories of his mentally unstable mother. At the same time, he is falling for a distressed young woman. No one is truly considering her happiness or her well-being. There is so much care in the handling of him, so much gentleness that Falls expresses. Plus, Leslie Uggams— from the Ossie Davis directed classic Black Girl— plays Malik’s wise, insightful Grandmother Kathleen, a wonderful treat seeing legacy Black actresses and actors onscreen. 

While white critics cannot properly comprehend a racial lens horror scope outside Jordan Peele’s ever present shadow, others understand Jusu’s resourceful parallels in Nanny strengthen a cyclic story specifically known to Black women immigrants caring for their charges— at times knowing these children better than their own. The scariest takeaway is that the price people like Aisha pay to reside in a country promising freedom is usually with their lives.