Direction: Alice Diop
Country: France
Inspired by the sinister true story of Fabienne Kakou, a mother with a good education sentenced in France in 2017 for infanticide, Saint Omer infuses motherhood, depression, and maleficent sorcery into a courtroom drama spiced with morbid witticisms. French director Alice Diop signs a complex and demanding first fiction film that doesn’t get too far from the documentary style that became her specialty (We, 2021; La Permanence, 2016). This one belongs to that kind of film where we make questions but are not given many answers.
Rama (Kayije Kagame) is an introspective novelist who gets deeply disturbed while attending the trial of a Senegalese woman, Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanda is an astounding revelation), accused of having killed her fifteen-month-old daughter. The case makes her reflect about her childhood and her cold mother, as well as her present pregnancy.
The subject matter, already powerful by itself, is treated like a mordant Dostoyevskian crime story shrouded in ambiguous motivation. It is intriguing and promising but it may leave a feeling of incompleteness in some viewers. Fixed camera shots induce petrification and turn things even drier and icier while exerting a strange power of fascination.
Saint Omer is visually strengthened by the sharp compositions of cinematographer Claire Mathon (Portrait of a Lady on Fire, 2019; Spencer, 2021). Even not as touching as it could be, this exquisitely acted film provides a guilty pleasure for those who like to dive into skepticism.
