European Films

French star actress Sandrine Bonnaire (Chabrol's La cérémonie, Varda's Sans toit ni loi / Vagabond) occupies the director’s chair and turns the camera on her younger sister Sabine for Elle s’appelle Sabine (Her Name is Sabine), a documentary about autism. Intercutting home-video and super-8 material from the sisters’ youth with recent footage of Sabine in a care facility in the Charente region, Bonaire quickly sketches the hopeless situation of a patient who, after having spent several years in a psychiatric institution, has not improved but only deteriorated. The rage of the director can be felt in each frame and clearly shapes the pamphlet-like narrative, though the film is still a compelling examination of autism and the way the outside world tries -- and, more often than not, fails -- to deal with it.

 

It seems as if autism is still underserved in the documentary world, with the only documentaries making headlines the ones from established filmmakers who tell the stories of an autistic member from their own family. Just a couple of years ago screenwriter Stefano Rulli made a documentary about his autistic son called Un silenzio particolare (A Private Silence), and now Bonnaire does likewise. What emerges from both is the infinite patience that is required to deal with people with autism, and how their families are hard-pressed to find adequate facilities for their loved ones, in both cases leading to the filmmakers themselves helping to create an environment where those with autism can live and be treated properly.

 

Elle s’appelle Sabine opens with some explanatory notes: Sabine is 38 now and was 28 when she was admitted to a psychiatric institution, where she stayed for five years. The footage of the pretty and lightly autistic sister that Sandrine took to New York, that she danced with in the living room and that enjoyed an exotic holiday in Guadelope is simply shocking when compared to the footage of her today; she gained 30 kilos in the years she was at the institution and now has to keep everything she holds dear locked away in a chest for fear she might destroy it herself. She even has herself locked in at night because, as she explains, "it is safer". It is hard to recognise something of the timid but bright adolescent girl in the Sabine of today, and in a way Elle s’appelle Sabine plays like Sandrine’s eulogy for the girl that used to be her sister.

 

The way in which the documentary is constructed is persuasive enough to make it clear that the five years in the institution are largely responsible for Sabine's transformation from one into the other, but a little more explanation about the situation that immediately preceded her entry into the institution would have helped (a two-line explanation suggests more was at hand but is quickly glossed over). What actually happened during her five years there never really emerges, either; there is just a lot of "way before" and " way after" footage, which, while making Bonnaire's points abundantly clear, does not offer a full range of evidence. Nevertheless, the film is an interesting and even important document about having an autistic person in the family and living with autism, something that is often difficultly recognised and ever more of a problem in the area of care and treatment availability.