Filou

Montana Jacobowitz

Montana plays Filou, a greedy woman who tries to leverage the revolution for her own gain.

The following is Filou's story, written by Julia Martinka:

Filou was an only child in a hopelessly poor French household just outside of the city. Her father left when she was very young and her mother was sick a lot, so she was basically left to fend for herself most the time in the streets. Filou tried very hard to take care of her mother because she loved her so much, but she wasn’t very good at it. They had no money, so she would steal from places to try to help. Her mother was not the most patient woman on earth and would get angry at Filou’s inability to take care of her, kicking her out of the house a lot. Filou’s father returned when she was 10, but things changed for the worse since he was abusive. Her mother died from typhus when Filou was 14, and she ran away from her father to the city where she was used to roaming the streets as a kid.

Street life was tough at first, but she managed to sweet talk some poor families into letting her sleep at their houses at night for a while. Filou made it her life goal to be richer than anyone else, so she wouldn’t have to sleep at other people’s houses or on the streets. She liked fashion, but could never afford anything nice so she tried her best to take what she could get. Eventually, when she was a late teen, she had an infamous reputation for robbing the houses where she stayed. People stopped letting her stay with them and she lived on the streets. It was sort of like a bitter game for Filou, at that point – how much money she could get out of people. Filou learned to live alone and never had a place to stay unless they paid her to be there. She fell in with the rough crowd because that was her status, and no matter how terrible she was treated, she couldn’t escape. Filou started trying to become indifferent to people since everyone she cared about seemed to betray her. She was still playing her game but wanted desperately to run away from her lowly like, to be rich like the Rousseau family and never worry about hunger or earning money.

Filou was desperate enough to do anything, even if she didn’t like it, in order to earn some coins. It became an obsession. When the tension of the French Revolution started, she was just as angry as any other commoner about mistreatment from the nobility. Filou didn’t understand why they got to be filthy rich while she was filthy and poor  and starving. She still looked on them with envy.

All of the years of an uncaring mother, abusive father, and rough living on the streets made Filou who she is today. Because of how dirt poor she always was, she will do anything for money and rub it in the faces of others to makes herself feel better. Everything she does is potentially financially beneficial to her, so she seizes every opportunity. Filou is angry about the nobility, but not angry enough to stay completely loyal to the Revolution, even if it means betraying who she has learned to like.