The Ambivalence of the Stranger and Bernardo Bertolucci’s Besieged (1998)

Abstract

In this article we consider the continuing film history of mass migration into Italy through the story of one such East African migrant, Shandurai (Thandie Newton), as it is represented in Bernardo Bertolucci 's Besieged (1998). In Shandurai we see the mysteries of a Roman extracomunitaria, who cleans the house of a musician, becomes dux of her medical class and falls in love with her employer, while being constantly bombarded by alternatively disturbing and comforting dreams of the beauty and dictatorial corruption of both her East African homeland and her new home. Recent literature addressing people movement within and between Europe and Africa has made much of the notion of ambivalence. In this context, ambivalence covers a range of experiences, largely clustering around personal struggles over freedom and guilt relating to home and family obligations. Considering these ideas of ambivalence in relation to Freud's interest in the topic and the work Julia Kristeva, we establish a similar narrative designed to account for the representation of the looking back and forward migrant subjectivity which sits at the heart of this film. Enduring the migrant's reluctant extrication from trauma, forced redefinition of home and family relations, and reciprocated feelings of hostility, admiration and love towards her hosts, Shandurai performs such a Januslike ambivalence. This cinematic ambivalence, we argue, is central to understanding contemporary migrant experience both in Italy and beyond. 'What do you know about Africa?'Horatio: O day and night, but this is wondrous strange! Hamlet: And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.