Cannes 2024 (Un Certain Regard): September Says (by Ariane Labed) | Review
Ariane Labed’s debut feature demonstrates a promising director in female stories dealing both with oppression and freedom due to her wonderfully structured screenplay.
One of the prominent actresses in the New Greek Wave movement, Ariane Labed made her acting debut in Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Attenberg and acted in multiple films directed by her husband, Yorgos Lanthimos including Alps and The Lobster. Finally behind the director’s chair, she made her directorial debut with her short film, Olla (2019, Director’s Fortnight) and has now directed her feature length debut, September Says in the Un Certain Regard section at this year’s Festival de Cannes. In her debut, she keeps the unique and peculiar sensibilities of the Greek New Wave, but showcases her ability in direction and story structure about an Indian family of a single mother and two teenage daughters trying to keep things afloat in the United Kingdom (which Labed had lived in from 2011-2021) using codes, trauma, and identity.
The film begins with September and July being photographed by her mother as adolescents dressed in the clothing a la The Shining twins splattered with blood. Immediately jumping into the present in their early teens, the opening sets an eerie tone of a dysfunctional family. The two sisters have a master and slave dynamic, with September and July respectively. Playing with word games, inspired by television and surroundings including July cuckooing when September says chicken, or ordering her commands such as hitting herself or making sadistic torturous pacts together. The mother, a self-made photographer, has made herself known for portraits of her daughters with art shows and such. Family dynamics are revealed as a distant parent/child aspect as the long-gone father, known as “trouble-maker, shit-stirrer” who is also a native Englishman. These elements feed into the strange behavior of the two sisters and the disdain of the mother towards the country as dark-skinned Indians. After a school fight, the story bifurcates from the city to the shore side where the mother and children’s psyche spiral downwards.
Labed’s directorial debut continues on the tradition of New Greek Wave cinema, but focusing on female stories. The two reference points are the double identity genre such as Persona and Mulholland Drive, but in September Says, Labed’s story structure mirrors its character’s inner life. By bifurcating the story, structure, and characters (split marriage and two sisters), Labed shows a confident approach for her storytelling. Although the twists and turns may seem forthcoming, Labed mixes the idiosyncratic marks of the New Greek Wave with the troubling society as outliers growing up in the United Kingdom. It is a finely executed debut that demonstrates Labed’s ability to match form and content within her odd-ball story of the pursuit of liberation.
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