In November 2013, a mother took a train from Paris to the northern coast of France with her 15-month-old daughter. She checked into a hotel, walked to the water’s edge at night, fed her hungry child, and drowned her at high tide.
The mother, Fabienne Cabo, who went on trial in 2016, admitted to the killing and spoke of witchcraft and witchcraft, adding, “There is no point in this story.”
Sitting in that court was French documentary filmmaker Alice Diop. Like Cabou, a woman of Senegalese descent, Diop has since seen a grainy surveillance photo in a newspaper and felt, “I know her so well, I recognize myself.” She was fascinated by this case. She spent days sitting in court staring at the woman in front of her, trying to make sense of the impossible.
The result of that experience is Diop’s charming debut, Saint Omer, a film that actually sits somewhere between documentary and scripted narrative, between truth and fiction. Most importantly, the film’s approach is so original that it even feels like only Diop could have created or thought of it.
Whether that’s an empathetic defense attorney answering questions for jury consideration—not if, but why—is less clear. peels back so many layers by simply asking race, gender, motherhood, and the lasting effects of French colonialism for the first time. The answer will feel unimportant.
Diop begins with a brutally short scene on a dark beach, where a woman walks with something as waves grow in the distance. This scene turns out to be a dream experienced by Rama, a French novelist and professor of also Senegalese descent. Rama is her Diop’s agent. She is obsessed with the story of infanticide and wants to base her next novel on it.
Soon Rama (the soulful Kaije Kagame), like Diop, moves to the beach and settles down on a bench in the wooden court (the movie set was next to the actual court). For Kabou, he faces a methodical but incredulous judge (Valérie Dréville).
Lawrence is not the kind of defendant anyone would expect. She was highly educated, a surprising fact to the media and others. Rama counters that she speaks like any other educated woman.
Lawrence’s mother in Senegal, obsessed with education and aspirations, did not allow her daughter to speak her native language, Wolof, only French. “Her obsession with my success tormented me,” she testifies. (In a heartbreaking moment, her mother attends court and buys every newspaper she can. She is so proud that her daughter is making headlines for her. Law to philosophy.
Lacking resources to survive, Lawrence finally had to quit her studies and move in with her older white boyfriend, Luc, who hid their relationship from her own family. When she became pregnant, she withdrew from the world completely against Luc’s wishes by keeping the child away. It was too far, the man complains. “It was very abstract to me.”
All testimonials are drawn from official records and brought to life by Guslagie Malanda as the insanely calm and utterly charming Lawrence and supporting actors. The audience is played by local townspeople, and the progression is filmed in chronological order, all contributing to the documentary-style atmosphere.
But unlike documentaries, we witness everything through Rama. She is horrified not only by crime, but by big and small prejudices directed at Lawrence. As a woman, as a woman of color, as a scholar in the white world, and as a daughter, an often selfish mother.
There is another similarity between Rama and Lawrence: Rama is pregnant. It’s her mother she’s talking to, she explains. or is it?
At the beginning of the film, someone says, “I hope this ordeal will give you an answer. I admit that I have not.
Similarly, Diop refuses to wrap her film in a neat bow. I have). than any documentary. And we are much better at it.
The super-release “Saint Omer” was rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America for “some thematic elements and terse and strong language”. Running time: 122 minutes. 3.5 stars out of 4.
