Movie Review: 'Ludi'

Recently, a clueless, out of touch politician, whose name I will not mention, said that if the American people were to be given $1400.00 stimulus checks, they might not go to work. Apparently this deeply delusional lifetime politician thinks we still live in the early 1950’s when you could get a jar of milk and a loaf of bread for 15 cents and feed your family for a week. Today, $1400.00 might give a person a little break in the rent and a dent in your monthly bills, and that’s for people who are already on the lower end of the economic ladder.

A great example of this point is the movie Ludi, starring Shein Mompremier, a film that debuted at the Miami Film Festival. Ludi is about a woman, named Ludi, with a good job who is barely getting by working 60 hours a week and still needing more time if she can get it. $1400.00 might be enough to keep a roof over her head and over the heads of those she’s supporting back in Haiti. It MIGHT be enough to do that.

Ludi is a caregiver at a Florida nursing home who works overtime as she tries to save just enough to be able to take a week off to return to Haiti for a visit. She’s working 60 hours a week and can barely afford to take time off just to visit her family. That doesn’t even begin to touch the dream she has of bringing her family to live with her in America. That’s an entirely different financial goal that is even further down her 60 hours a week road.

Desperately not wanting to disappoint her family back in Haiti, Ludi needs a little extra money this month, on top of the 240+ hours that make up her full time job. So, she risks her job to take a private health care assignment from her neighbor. The job is supposed to entail $500.00 for six hours a night, for one week. And this is when the story of Ludi spins off into a new and unexpected direction, one that seems to perfectly capture the line between comedy and tragedy.

I will end the plot description there as I want you to experience Ludi for yourself. This is a slice of life movie that takes you into a unique American experience and while it isn’t plot or twist driven per se, discretion about where the plot goes is the better choice here. Shein Mompremier’s performance is the key to Ludi and so I certainly could not spoil the movie by telling you where it’s headed, but still.

Mompremier brilliantly captures the weariness and hopelessness that is born of living life just to work and get by. We get very little sense of who Ludi is or what gives her joy. She lives her life entirely for the sake of those depending on her and you can sense just from her air of exhaustion how much that weighs on her. Adding to her troubles is a man at work who pushes her to date him even though he’s married and withholds from her hours at work that she needs as a way of harassing her into a date.

So, on top of all of the other challenges in her life, she has rank sexism to deal with. That Ludi isn’t completely miserable is a testament to her spirit. I don’t think I could bear the weight of what Ludi has to go through and maintain an air of professionalism and genuine care for others. This is the spirit of an immigrant, of someone who understands struggle and who deserves the chance to experience the other side of life sometime.

That is what is so heartbreaking about Ludi, she came to America for a better life, for an opportunity and what she finds is exploitative wages, harassment, the constant threat of government interventionism, and the pressure to provide for her family while also never getting to enjoy the benefits of being a family, the warmth and comfort derived from the presence of people you love and who love you.

She bears all of this alone.

Ludi premiered at the Miami Film Festival and will be playing as part of the South By Southwest Festival. The SXSW Premiere is Tuesday, March 16th @ 3pm ET / 2pm CT / 12 noon PT.