52 Films by Women Vol 9. 12. Kika (Director: Alexe Poukine)
Poukine’s film,
which she co-wrote with Thomas Van Zuylen, deals with unexpected love. Kika
(Manon Clavel), a social worker with a husband, Paul (Thomas Coumans) and young
(school age) daughter, Louison (Suzanne Elbaz) falls for David (Makita Samba)
after they spend an evening together locked in a cycle repair shop, where David
works. Kika arrives at the shop just as it is about to close, convincing David
to take pity on her. He asks her to lock the door, but somehow she breaks the
mechanism. Alerting a neighbour, they are told to keep the noise down ‘or I’ll
call the police’. Bonding over adversity, Kika and David are eventually rescued
and cycle home in different directions, each stealing a look back at the other.
The next day, Kika tells a colleague, ‘I’m in love’.
Kika and David meet
for coffee. But where can they connect for something more? They choose a sex
hotel, where rooms are rented for the hour. The room has a picture of an
African man and a white woman. They could be David and Kika.
With no on-screen
histrionics of any kind, Kika and David move in together, taking Louison with
them. So far, so happy, though Kika has a particularly challenging client, Mme
Lauwers (Marijke Pinoy), who has got heavily into debt. Kika offers to hide her
rug. ‘Take the crystal ball,’ Mme Lauwers tells her. She can sense that Kika is
pregnant.
Then tragedy. Kika
and Louison return home to discover that David has had a stroke and died. The
wake is strikingly staged. A room filled with people slowly empties out as Kika
stands by the sink tidying up, the camera slowly zooming into her during an unbroken
take. There are nods of acknowledgement, sympathetic hands on her shoulder as
the room gradually empties and Kika refuses to show any emotion.
Kika cannot afford
the apartment. A colleague offers to fast-track social assistance for her. She
needs to raise €6,000 for a deposit and two months rent. Kika refuses. Why does
she deserve more help above her clients? This takes the drama into a larger
subject, the absence of social support in a rentier economy. Those unexpectedly
houseless and unable to get a loan are forced to desperate measures to care for
themselves. In Kika’s case, she prevaricates over keeping the unborn child. At
an appointment, she is told she is five weeks pregnant; plenty of time to
decide if she wishes to have an abortion, but if she chooses to do so, there is
a six-day cooling period.
With limited
options, Kika and Louison move into her father’s house. Kika’s mother died. Her
father is a widower. He tells her, ‘now you and I have something in common’, as
if the death of Kika’s mother did not scar her emotionally. Kika’s father has
re-married. At mealtime, he extols his meal of serving pasta with fresh baby
tomatoes. ‘Before they never used to do it. They go so well together. You even
see it on Top Chef.’ It is as if there is an ocean between father and daughter.
Kika’s stepmother does not cook. In the evening, as her father and stepmother
watch Top Chef, father grumbling at the screen, Kika tells them that it is time
for a bed. A table is moved. The sofa is converted into a bed, which Kika and
Louison share. When Kika leaves for her second job, working for a fishmonger,
receiving €40 for a days’ work (‘pack the fish tightly’) and an extra €20 as
starter pay, Louison asks to come with her. ‘Grandfather spent one hour the
previous day explaining how to load the dishwasher.’ Louison dreads the day
ahead. Kika suggests that she prompt her father to move 100 things. If he does
so, then Kika will take next Wednesday off and spend it with her. Later, her
father and stepmother confront Kika in the bathroom about Louison’s trauma.
Yet, David wasn’t her real father.
Inspired by a young
woman whom she met in her office, Kika takes a photograph of her soiled
underwear and advertises it on a website. This leads her to meet the (male)
purchaser in a café, who asks her to insult him for an extra €50. This begs the
question: where do Belgian sexual deviants get the money from? Sitting behind
the overweight deviant is a middle-class well-dressed elderly woman who appears
to be the epitome of respectability. Kika flatly delivers the insults that the
man asks for, describing him as shit and not fit to lick her boots. The elderly
woman lifts her head to encourage Kika, who curses the man with slightly more
enthusiasm. The transaction is complete and Kika is hooked.
Pictured: Another dissatisfied customer. Kika (Manon Cleval) leaves the scene of her grime in a still from the Belgian film, 'Kika', directed by Alexe Poukine. Still courtesy of Imagine Film Distribution.
Kika phones her
customer again offering a sale. She enters the world of BDSM, which Kika
mistakenly calls ‘BSM’ (in my country, the British School of Motoring). She
rents out a room in the love hotel where she liaised with David. After allowing
him to lick her boots, albeit with reluctance, and watching him reach for his
penis in his underpants to ejaculate, as it were, out of shot, she asks him on
departure where she can meet more people like him. The customer is surprisingly
helpful.
Kika runs into
trouble with a man who asks her to defecate on him. ‘You shit anyway. It costs
you nothing. Why not do it on me?’ Kika remains uncertain. The customer
prepares to leave. ‘You won’t get a good review.’ Kika disappears and craps
into a plastic bin liner. She hands it to the man. He tosses €5 on the ground.
‘Pick it up,’ he tells her. ‘It’s two hundred,’ she reminds him. The customer
leaves the room. Kika confronts him on the stairs. Other sex workers appear and
threaten to call the police. He throws the cash at Kika.
‘What happened to
that man that used to come here with you?’ Kika is asked as she is befriended
by sex workers. ‘He died,’ Kika explains. Kika quizzes them about their work.
They refer her to Rasha (Anaël Snoek), a sex worker who receives customers in
her own apartment. Meeting her there, Kika is acknowledged by a man who is leaving.
‘Show me your
profile,’ Rasha demands. ‘You have to list your practices,’ she advises. ‘Also,
update your photos.’ She is also sceptical about Kika’s availability. Rasha is
having problems of her own with her landlord, after complaints about the
numbers of people visiting her. Kika gives her name of a lawyer. ‘You have to
convert your lease from residential to commercial,’ she advises. Kika is
understandably far more confident talking about the law than BDSM. As she
leaves, she asks whether Rasha has any customers that she can share. ‘You ask
me for advice, then you want to take my customers?’ Rasha responds. Kika
apologises.
At home, Kika deals
with her daughter’s frequent bedwetting. Paul rents an Air BnB and offers to
look after her. Kika continues to work as a social worker. She takes Mme
Lauwers to a hostel, but the elderly woman is unhappy. ‘Your man. He is in a
room with many bedrooms,’ she tells Kika. David is more alive to Mme Lauwers
than Mme Lauwers’ own reality. ‘What about your family?’ Kika asks. She later
discovers Mme Lauwers’ daughter died fifteen years ago. It is implied that this
sparked her interest in the afterlife.
Kika gets slightly
better at BDSM, administering whacks with a stick and using a safe word. She
asks the customer why he endures it. ‘I live in pain all the time. At least
this way I get to control it.’ She socialises with other sex workers. ‘We’re
like social workers,’ one of them explains. ‘I am a social worker,’ replies
Kika.
The film builds to
two sequences involving Rasha. In the first, Kika and Rasha go to an old man’s
house. They are offered drinks. Kika asks for water, Rasha ‘the usual’. The old
man dresses up as a baby, sits in an over-sized highchair and asks to have his
nappy changed. He tells Kika to lie next to him. Kika’s job is to bring him to
ejaculation ‘like his mother’. Kika hesitates. Rasha steps in. Afterwards,
sitting at the bus stop, Rasha hands Kika her share. The inference is that Kika
did a bad job. In their final encounter, Kika visits Rasha’s premises, Rasha
grateful that the lawyer Kika recommended helped her with her landlord. Having
received instruction and the assurance of her understanding, Rasha strikes Kika
repeatedly, Kika (finally, perhaps) experiencing pain.
Pictured: Louison (Suzanne Elbaz) and her mother Kika (Manon Cleval) in a scene from the Belgian drama, 'Kika', directed by Alexe Poukine. Still courtesy of Imagine Film Distribution (Belgium)
There is a coda.
Kika and Louison leave an apartment, taking the ‘louer’ (for rent) sign off the
door. They watch a street performance together. Mme Louwer is not so fortunate.
Kika abandoned her when she appeared at her office, Kika finally choosing to take
some leave.
Moving between drama
and scenes with a comic element, Kika doesn’t have anything particularly new to
say about sex work. It is fastidiously unerotic, relying for verisimilitude on
perceptions of lonely Belgian men with disturbing sexual proclivities. The film
is better at critiquing the gap between available social assistance and those
who need it. It is easier to get assistance for psycho-sexual trauma than for
housing. That, in itself, is a big problem.
Reviewed at Brussels
International Film Festival, Palace Cinema, Screen One, Saturday 21 June 2025,
18:30 screening
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