Nanny Review: Anna Diop Shines In Nikyatu Jusu's Haunting Feature Debut [Sundance]
Writer-director Nikyatu Jusu, in her feature directorial debut, masterfully marries folkloric horror with a haunting character study and analysis of the American Dream. There are so many moving parts within Nanny, coalescing to bring an overall moving, effective portrait of the immigrant experience in America, and the heartache of leaving one’s home and loved ones behind.
Aisha (Anna Diop) is a Senegalese immigrant who takes up work as a nanny for Amy's (Michelle Monaghan) daughter Rose (Rose Decker) in New York City. She works (and overworks) as she tries to raise enough money to bring her young son Lamine (Jahleel Kamara) to the U.S. to live with her permanently. As her workload increases — and her overtime hours go uncompensated by Amy — Aisha grows all the more frustrated as her promises to Lamine begin to sound empty. Meanwhile, Aisha starts to hear and see things around her that blur her reality and intensify her feelings and struggles.
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Jusu imbues Nanny with supernatural elements that aid in understanding Aisha’s headspace, the unease she so often feels as an outsider, and the constant pain that goes along with the emotional toll of taking care of someone else’s child while she’s unable to properly care for her own. These supernatural aspects manifest in disconcerting ways, threatening to consume Aisha in the physical world — the sound of water rushing down, flooding Aisha’s senses, the shadow of a spider’s legs as it crawls closer and closer, the creaking of the door that alerts her to something, even if she can’t quite make sense of the signs. While these things bring the story to an intense conclusion, they are also the weakest
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