Mix-Up or Méli-Mélo (Françoise Romand, 1986)

BY REQUEST: T.J. Larson

Romand's French subtitle, méli-mélo, translates as hodgepodge or jumble, and that gives a slight hint about the film to come. Mix-Up is an experimental documentary about two women, Margaret and Blanche, who both went into labor at about the same time, went to the same maternity ward (or "nursing home," as these Brits confusingly call it), and due to an administrative mix-up, ended up taking each other's baby daughters home. Margaret somehow knew all along that something was wrong, contacting genetic scientists, lawyers, and amazingly enough, George Bernard Shaw, who took an active interest in Margaret's case. Meanwhile, Blanche had no reason to believe Margaret's suspicions, and explains that she was plenty creeped out by this woman, whom she'd met only in passing, stalking her home and trying to insinuate herself into this other family's life.

Romand, a filmmaker I don't know especially well (I've only seen her diary film The Camera I, which is quite a bit different from this), has rounded up all the key players in the situation who were still living in 1986, and rather than allowing Mix-Up to play out as a conventional series of talking heads, has all the "performers" arranged into highly formal tableaux. Sensibly enough, given the subject matter, Romand favors visual twinning and mirror reflections, but she also works to establish the quintessential Britishness of these people, introducing new subjects by showing them riding the bus or framed against a dowdy suburban house.

In fact, Mix-Up is a lot like early Peter Greenaway, although in organization only. He would never find a story like this -- one about motherhood and human loss -- particularly seductive. In its anecdotal nature, it's much more like a Werner Herzog joint, since it relies on people returning to a traumatic moment and trying to explain it and act it out based on fading memories and complicated recollections. This is an important part of Romand's approach, since Mix-Up ultimately has a happy ending, but it is shown to be hard-won, and maybe a bit precarious.

After all, Margaret spent much of her life being treated like her suspicions were insane. Even her husband Charles did not believe her. But when we hear from the two adult daughters, Peggy and Valerie, we learn that on some level, both families knew something was wrong and could not figure it out. Blanche and her late husband Fred, for example, made frequent mention that Peggy did not look like them. More troublingly, Valerie remarks that she always felt that Margaret (who she now refers to as her foster-mother) withheld love from her, keeping her at a distance. The parents were all sending subconscious messages to these two children that their family life was somehow erroneous, hopelessly "off."

Romand doesn't need to articulate the nature vs. nurture argument that underlies this situation, the fact that children were raised in families who intuited that they didn't belong, despite the lack of hard evidence to prove it. (The truth wasn't revealed to the entire family until Peggy's wedding day.) As we listen to Margaret, Charles, and Blanche, a deeper tragedy emerges. Blanche loved Peggy as her own, but Margaret and, to a lesser extent, Charles treated Valerie as a misfit, and went to far as to offer to pay for Peggy's university studies. In other words, one girl had two families, while the other had none. 

Romand's formalist treatment of the material means that every perspective and event is given equal weight, but also that there is no softening its harshest aspects. The lasting impact of the baby-swap on Valerie is heightened, rather than mitigated, by Romand's stoic presentation of the people involved. By the same token, this restraint makes the families' jovial, stiff-upper-lip attitude seem less convincing. The film concludes with a live snapshot of Peggy, Valerie, and dozens of relatives. "We all belong to each other," Margaret says, and it's certainly true that these two families, like it or not, will be inextricably linked, probably forever. But by presenting its story in such a minimalist, straightforward manner, Mix-Up permits the viewer to draw his or her own conclusions.