France – Drama – Year: 2022 – Running time: 122 mins
Languages: French
Audience Response: 10 slips returned
- ‘Excellent’: 6 votes
- ‘Very Good’: 2 votes
- ‘Good’: 1 vote
- ‘Satisfactory’: 1 vote
- ‘Poor’: 0 votes
Read the comments here or visit our “Saint Omer” discussion page
Synopsis:
Laurence Coly, a Senegalese woman, is on trial in St. Omer for causing the death of her 15-month-old child by leaving her on a beach to be swept away by the tide. Roma, a budding novelist, is interested in the case, for personal reasons, and travels from Paris to observe the trial.
Alice Diop’s documentarian approach to the courtroom drama is fresh and urgent, consistently commanding attention to the women as they speak and listen.
Lillian Crawford (Empire Magazine)
Director: Alice Diop
Writers: Amrita David, Alice Diop, Marie N’Diaye
Main Cast:
| Kayije Kagame | Rama |
| Guslagie Malanda | Lawrence Coly |
| Valérie Dréville | La Présidente du tribunal |
| Aurélia Petit | Maître Vaudenay |
| Xavier Maly | Luc Dumontet |
(for full cast list, reviews and more information, see IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes)
Chelmsford Film Club Notes:
In 2016 director Alice Diop – this is her debut feature film – attended the trial of Fabienne Kabou who was convicted of leaving her 15 month-old child on a beach to be swept away by the tide. In this film Rama (Kaylie Kagame) is a pregnant young academic/novelist who attends the trial, in Saint Omer, close to Calais, of Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanda), a Senegalese woman accused of the same crime. In September ’22 the film premiered at the Venice international Film Festival and won the Silver Lion Grand Jury prize and the Luigi De Laurentis Lion of the Future award.
Rama travels from Paris to Saint Omer for the trial, close-ups on the journey mirroring those in Diop’s first film, a documentary called Danton’s Death, the study of a Black man at drama school in Paris and the cultural prejudices he encounters. The journey, as well as the trial of Laurence, becomes significant.
Rama feels a close connection to Laurence being, like her, pregnant as a result of a mixed-race relationship, and having difficult relations with her own mother. She, Rama, also hopes to explore in her writing the myth of Medea, a direct descendant of the sun god Helios, an enchantress with the gift of prophecy, who helps Jason, leader of the Argonauts, obtain the Golden Fleece from her father King Aeetes of Colchis. Her passionate relationship with Jason is ended when he leaves her to marry another woman: Medea then murders her sons by Jason. The issue for Rama is: was Medea a monstrous, murderous mother or, in reality, did she have little choice?
Laurence’s defense (she pleads ‘not guilty’ to murder but admits to leaving her child on the beach) poses real issues for the French secular court: is Laurence ‘mad’ and/or influenced by Senegalese ‘witchcraft’? “Do you know why you killed your daughter?” asks the judge. “I don’t know” Laurence replies, “I hoped this trial would teach me”. The defense lawyer eloquently argues that her client is mad. To find her guilty, she says, would be to decide that she is a monster (like Medea?) – ‘It is more convenient to see her as a monster’ – and such a decision would be a verdict but would not be justice (‘un arret, mais pas la justice’), all the time speaking to us, directly into the camera.
In a ‘courtroom drama’, such as this film mainly is, audiences will look forward to, even demand, a resolution: a ‘verdict’. Diop refuses to give us one. Are we to ask ourselves why?