The first set of photos (A) are clearly opposite in the way she is posed and dressed. She is facing the opposite direction in each, along with being dressed in a "classy, French" way in one photo, and having the looser fitting clothing and natural hair in the other. The photos could represent her ideas about coming to France and her reality. The first photo is from earlier in the movie when she first gets to France; she is still dressing up- wearing heels, having her hair done, and wearing earrings- in her beliefs of being part of a "cosmopolitan world." In the later photo, she has been working in France for a while, and it is apparent how her hopes and dreams of fashion and such have disappeared, as she begins dressing in more casual wear and not bothering to fix her hair, but instead letting it stand out naturally.
These two pictures could play towards the native audience of the film because of the depiction of her wanting to be part of the elite French world with shopping and parties and to get away from her native home of Dakar where they are poor and don't have these things, to returning to a more agreeable way of dressing for someone from Dakar who takes pride in their native roots and who they are. It may have the audience stop and examine their own lives and how they see the world: do they want the things they don't have- the perception of a better life somewhere else- or are they happy with who they are and the things they have and where they live?
The girl in the film was obviously not happy with either world and decided to end her life because of it.
Good. We should remember that Diouana's smooth hair in the earlier image is a wig. We actually see her take it off later. And we should also remember that she actively teases out her hair just prior to the other image. She locks herself in the bathroom and hides from Madame as she defiantly combs her hair out. So, we could see this natural look as a kind of act of defiance. But, then, we have to ask who she's defying. She seems to do this to spite the French, but she also discarding her own chosen look. That said, we have to wonder, too, what the progressive-minded director wanted his audience to take from this. In what sense might he be suggesting that the should be "happy" with who they were? Who were they? And should they simply be content?
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