He Even Has Your Eyes

Yesterday I saw a French movie called ‘Il a déjà tes yeux’. In English it’s called ‘He Even Has Your Eyes’. It’s a bit of a chaotic comedy but I loved it because of the original theme: a black couple adopting a white baby.

In the movie it was the first time that such an adoption was done by the Board of Child so they were struggling with it too. Because usually it’s the other way around: a white couple adopting a black child. At first the French-African parents, Paul and Sali, were surprised that their baby was white with big blue eyes, but they started to love him right away.

For her Senegalese parents it was a different story. The first time her mother was introduced to the baby, called Benjamin, she asked: ‘What’s that?’ and ‘Why is he called Benjamin instead of Lamine?’. She was not amused or happy at all. How could her child do that to her? The only thing her husband said was: ‘He’s never gonna be my grandchild.’

The movie shows us how people may react on this situation. A woman from the Board of Child is trying to sabotage the adoption by showing up at the parents’ house very often and unexpectedly. Grandma is trying to ‘solve the problem’ in a cultural way by bringing offers to the mosque. Grandpa is laughed at by his friends in the café. In a lunchroom a waiter thinks that Benjamin belongs to a white girlfriend. A black babysitter in the park is assuming that Sali is also a babysitter instead of his mother. And some others are just happy for Paul and Sali.

At a sudden moment when Benjamin is separated from his parents and gets into a crisis, everybody works together to get him out of it. That’s when they all realize that the only thing a baby needs is love and affection from his parents no matter what color they are.

To me it’s a beautiful story. What do you think about it?