Popular Culture Review 32.1
is mostly absent , and her elder brother rules the household with physical and verbal abuse . While in despair about being tracked to a vocational school rather than “ being like everyone else ,” Marieme is approached by a gang of girls , the titular bande : Lady , Fily , and Adiatou invite Marieme to join them for a day in the city center . This is no innocent shopping trip ; the girls clash with other gangs , shoplift , drink , and do drugs in a rented hotel room . All of this seems as much rebellion as escape , but the bonding moment with gang is profound . At the hotel , Lady encourages Marieme to stand up for herself and gives her a necklace with the name Vic - for Victory .
This is the first step in a series of transformative moments for Vic / Mariem as she explores different ways of defining herself , many of which we can understand as donning and then shedding a costume or mask . She brawls in an empty lot to reclaim the lost honor of her friend ; she takes charge of her own sexuality and defies her brother to sleep with the boy that she likes , Ismaël ; she leaves the bande and runs away from home to deliver drugs ; she fights with Ismaël and ultimately breaks up with him over his patronizing objections to her independent ( if dangerous and illegal ) behavior . Ultimately , her journey comes full circle . Having fled the lecherous drug-dealer , Abou , Marieme returns to her family ’ s apartment building . She uses the intercom to be buzzed in but cannot bring herself to open the door . She leaves in tears but finally regains her resolve , straightens her shoulders and walks away off camera to an uncertain future , one that is at least her own .
A close analysis of film form and the ways it is used to depict place and space in Bande de filles helps to illustrate Sciamma ’ s anticolonial feminism : her method of cataloging locations of masculinist control in the Parisian cité and then using of cin-
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