I’m usually in favor of injecting a little bit of genre into any story, so it’s a surprise that I came out of Nanny—which interweaves the myth of the African water spirit Mami Wata with the story of a Senagalese immigrant working as a Manhattan nanny—wishing the movie had played it straight. Anna Diop plays Aisha, who works long hours to care for a little girl, hoping to raise enough money to bring her young son to America. Aisha is asked at one point, “How do you use your rage?” and Diop has a quiet ferocity that would make the question worth considering in ordinary circumstances, without any supernatural elements. For a while, it seems as if that’s how Nanny means to proceed, as only a brooding score suggests anything more metaphysical. But then the visions begin. These flourishes offer some striking visuals—especially an encounter Aisha has with Mami Wata in a community pool—but they don’t build upon each other in a suspensefully illuminating way. Then, after a slowly burning midsection, the film’s last third rushes from awful tragedy to hopeful ending in a way that’s whiplash-inducing. Even so, Nanny stands as a promising feature debut for writer-director Nikyatu Jusu; I’d rather see an abundance of ambition in an emerging filmmaker, which is what we get here, than timidity.
(11/11/2022)
