By: Maya Barillas Mohan, Staff Writer
Content warning: mention of domestic abuse.
If the 104-minute movie The Body Remembers When The World Broke Open feels like a lifetime, it could be because it offers a completely undiluted clip of one. The movie could also feel that way because it breathes at the same rate reality does: at red lights, you idle, and during awkward conversations, you stall while you find the words. The film is based on a real encounter director Elle-Máijá Apiniskim Tailfeathers had.
While fictitious in its specifics, The Body Remembers handles issues facing Indigenous women throughout the unceded lands of Vancouver with nuance.
Pregnant, barefoot, and soaked from the rain, 19-year-old Rosie (Kwakwaka’wakw) meets Áila (Niisitapi/Sami), who following a particularly aggressive attack from Rosie’s boyfriend, scoops Rosie under her arm and guides her to temporary safety. Despite both being Indigenous women, their circumstances vary: Áila is white-passing and returns to a clean apartment and a gentle boyfriend of her own; motherhood is a challenge Rosie anticipates tackling independently, whereas Áila is not sure she wants to tackle it at all.
The movie’s handheld, continuous-take style deposits the viewer between two characters trying their best. Each cut is seamlessly concealed because one camera is swapped out for another when a film cartridge is spent. The real-time tracking of the film’s events grounds them in lifelike motivations. Yet, it’s hard to tell if Áila is speaking fully from a place of empathy, or if a glimmer of perceived (white) saviourship — underpinned by class difference — cuts through efforts to connect Rosie with support services. At the same time it’s difficult to sympathize with Rosie due to her repeated offences of theft and hostility towards Áila, but the movie unravels the unseen struggle of abuse facing Indigenous women. Rosie’s hostile boyfriend dominates much of her (and the plot’s) narrative despite limited time on screen. His rage is the reason she flees, but it is also the reason she returns home. This pattern is not unique, and the characters know this: pulled along bleak Vancouver streets in the backseat of a yellow cab, Rosie is reluctant to reach the safe house destination.
As the viewer becomes familiarized with the women, it’s hard not to notice the stereotypes imbued into the characters. Áila is a blandly dressed millennial with an apartment adorned by subtle Indigenous motifs, clearly aware of how her marginalized identity fits on top of her position of privilege. Her kindness seems to be an obligation to her Indigenous heritage, and courtesy to Rosie’s vulnerability. Rosie has a heavier body with matted hair both of which compounds the abuse she experiences, implying the correlation between affordable food and its negative health impacts for impoverished communities. I think it was a stylistic choice intended to make composites out of Rosie and Áila, but the movie seems to imply that abuse victims or those that offer help look a particular way. I don’t think this is a flaw, but I wonder if it perpetuates a stereotype rather than identifying the traits a vulnerable person could carry.
The characters diverge quietly because the movie doesn’t really end. It almost feels like the 16mm film simply ran out for the final time. As a viewer, you might want stories to draw to tidy resolutions, but for Indigenous women facing violence, there is really no satisfying end. I recommend this movie even though it can be a confrontational watch; it shows two different realities on streets the viewer recognizes in a third way of endless possibilities. It’s immersive and evocative, but most of all, I think that 104-minute runtime is the gestation period for empathy to grow.
