Lip features a montage of scenes from American films dating from the 1930s to the present in which the roles of servants, cooks and other housekeepers are played by Black women. Moffatt's editing rejects any simplistic interpretation by so moving between the past and the present that one becomes infused with the other, bringing to light a palette of unexpected nuances in the servants' reactions. If in some excerpts the “servants” are indeed mistreated, in others, despite being from a lower social position, they show a clear affinity for insolence and the impertinent comeback, the stinging retort. Above all, they prove that they are not taken in by the so-called superiority of their employers.As is her wont, Moffatt offers viewers no readymade moral. Yet it would be difficult to challenge a viewpoint that condemns the place allotted to Black actresses in American movies. Even if the tone of her film is amusing and infused with wit, Lip openly takes aim at the sorry, narrow confines to which Hollywood condemned women of color, limiting them to stereotypical roles.

Isabelle Aeby Papaloïzos