Bibi is the story of a grieving woman who is constantly threatened by a strange figure. However, she does not realize until too late that she is actually threatened by her own acts. The film utilizes the trope of the unreliable narrator. Her account of her harrowing story is severely distorted due to her mental state. The unreliability keeps us from getting to the objective truth till the very end. The film’s surrealism is a reflection of the downward spiral of the central protagonist’s mind.
Spoilers Ahead
What Happens In The Film?
The film Bibi is set in a Victorian mansion. Vivian is distraught by a dream where a young girl leads her to a horse stable and hastily sketches a frightening image. The image jolts Vivian and she wakes up to the real world. Vivian is dealing with some sort of mental trauma for which she undergoes therapy. Observing her hyper-reliance on drugs to feel better, the doctor curtails her dosage. Vivian shares her regal estate with her daughter, Bibi. The sudden switching back and forth of the time hints that Vivian had another daughter in the past. Vivian is so distraught by the grief of losing her daughter that she considers ending her life. However, she decides against it at the last moment. She spends her days in her dimly lit mansion, trying to wash down all the pent-up grief with endless glasses of wine, and dressing up for herself. There is also a threatening shadow of a stranger who constantly lurks around their house and tries to lure Bibi into his trap.
What kind of relationship does Vivian share with Bibi?
The relationship between Vivian and Bibi seems peculiarly stiff and driven by fear. What catches our attention throughout the film is Bibi’s cold demeanor. Bibi is oddly hostile towards her mother. Perhaps her own grief has kept her out of touch with her mother. There is a point in the film where Bibi menacingly tells Vivian that she has invited the stranger into their house. Vivian is frightened and does her best to lock him out, but Vivian’s nonchalance during such a crucial moment stands out. Her nonchalance is almost a mark of evil.
Vivian’s degrading mental state is partly enabled by Bibi. She offers Vivian the medicine that her therapist had deprescribed. The next morning, after the harrowing nighttime incident, Vivian looks for answers from Bibi. Vivian asks Bibi to consider her emotional pain and give her some clarity regarding the stranger. However, Bibi is as cold as ever. Vivian figures out that Bibi is still reeling from the departure of her sister, Ava. Bibi in fact wishes that Ava return, even if it requires Bibi to die. Her trauma is a direct result of her father’s abuse dating back to her early childhood. When Vivian pleads with Bibi to move on, she refuses to entertain the idea.
The nightmarish carousel that Bibi visits
We are suddenly presented with Vivian arriving at a carousel in the middle of nowhere. The place where the carousel is set up is dark and indiscernible, so there is really no way to know where she has arrived. If the visuals were setting up the ominous tone of the scene, the attendant of the carousel being familiar with Vivian further intensifies the mystery. The brightly colored shiny carousel stands in stark contrast to the endless void of the darkness surrounding it. The ride starts when Vivian happily sits atop one of the toy horses. However, mid-way, her world spins out of control when she notices that she is sharing the ride with the stranger from the night.
What does Nancy say that provokes Vivian to throw her out of the house?
Vivian’s annoying friend, Nancy, turns up at the front door at midnight. Nancy is perturbed by Vivian’s degrading mental state. She claims that she has seen Vivian talking to herself, and it has her worried about her well-being. Vivian claims that the only person she talks to is her daughter, Bibi. Nancy is confused. She reminds Vivian that she has no daughter, and her horse, Meadow, has been long dead. It is through Nancy that the narrative demystifies and we learn that Bibi was a fragment of Vivian’s imagination. In fact, Vivian once had a sister named Ava. Vivian is so attached to the world where she was together with Ava that she has imagined her younger self, Bibi, to be her own daughter. Nancy repeats that the trauma that she is suffering now is the fault of her father. For Vivian, the distinction between the real and the imaginary has become severely blurred. And, since she has willingly accepted it as the only way of living, finding her way out of it seems an inordinate task.
Who is the stranger in black?
The film alludes to an incident from the past when Vivian or Bibi was a teenager. She had witnessed her father murdering Ava in the bathtub. Her father also killed their pet horse, Meadow. Following this, Bibi shot her father and tried to make it look like suicide. In the present day, the stranger in black seems to be a manifestation of the fear that haunts Vivian or Bibi regarding her father returning from the dead.
Is Vivian Dead Or Alive?
In Bibi’s ending, unable to stop the mental images of the carousel, Vivian is seen drowning herself in the bathtub. It hints at the possibility that Vivian might now be at peace. However, the film problematizes this ending and continues flowing. We are presented with the image of a Vivian in white, who witnesses Bibi trying to see her sister, but being turned away by a man. In the end, we see Vivian in a wheelchair sketching her residual memories with Ava. It is Nancy who we see as a nurse tending to her and assuring her that she will be alright.
Bibi’s ending is ambiguous, and the meaning of it is not explicitly stated. However, it could be a possibility that Vivian is a patient with a mental illness, perhaps schizophrenia, and paraplegia. With no possibility of movement, she has conjured up a world of her own, and whatever the film shows us throughout is the reflection of all that is going on inside her mind. Furthermore, Nancy is not her neighbor, but the only person who is close to her, her nurse. The narrative is disjointed because we are forced to follow Vivian’s unreliable point of view till a point. When Vivian’s make-believe world falls apart, we understand that it is Vivian who should be saved from herself.
