Lisette

a bit of a break from “tales from S. Sudan”...or not so much a break, just a little change of pace. Lest you think that somehow when you become a missionary and move to a remote place, you lose all sense of who you were before and lose all contact with the outside world...

After team meeting and a fabulously scrumptious curry and naan dinner, we watched Hugo. I’d seen it with the fabulous Miss Keeton at the Moolah in 3D sometime around the turn of the year and really enjoyed it so I was excited to watch it again and for everyone else to enjoy it too. I noticed a few new things this time around.

The most interesting was the role of this relatively minor character named Lisette. She sells flowers in the train station. Smiles, hums to herself even (or maybe I imagined she hums to herself because she looks like a person who would hum to herself), and is generally pleasant and caring and helpful in her small, everyday, mostly unnoticed role. She is not totally unnoticed however as she earns the attention of the Station Inspector. He generally makes my blood curdle with his arrogant and harsh persona, and I’m not insinuating in the least that I’d like to draw the attention of the likes of the Inspector. BUT, in his pursuit of Lisette, there is a moment when he finally gets up the gumption to go and talk to her after putting on his best smile, and she’s kind and pleasant to him in his awkwardness. I think his artificial leg creaks particularly loud at one point in their conversation, drawing attention to it, he becomes self conscious and quickly tells her he was wounded in the War and waddles off in embarrassment.

It’s what happens next that intrigued me most: she calls after him, telling him that she had a brother that served in the war as well. She takes note of his embarrassment and she reaches out...she doesn’t want to leave him in it alone, but joins him in it, in a way. Her brief comment speaks volumes - it says I can see past your leg.

I wanna be like Lisette. I want to be a person that naturally reaches out to people in those places and times when they’re ashamed and embarrassed, a person that doesn’t leave others alone but moves towards them when they need it most.

Thing is, I have the most experience in the role of the Inspector...prideful, harsh, wanting to make others pay in life like he had to, insecure, embarrassed of my quirks and “disabilities” of sorts...maybe it’s my experience in his shoes that makes me want shoes that look more like hers?

The scene moves on or at least I don’t remember much more of it. Later in the movie it’s made clear that she and the Inspector have “gotten together” and live happily ever after or so.

Maybe you’ve seen the movie and you think I’m making far too much of their interaction, over dramatizing things. You’re entitled to your own opinion (or at least that’s what someone or another used to tell me all the time). But in any case, I recommend the movie. Good story, creatively portrayed, well done. And if you watch it, take note of Lisette. We could use more of her in the world.