"Saint Omer"

Movie Review

Kayije Kagame plays Rama in the French legal drama Saint-Omer, which was directed by Alice Diop and stars Guslagie Malanda as Laurence Coly. In the movie, Rama is a pregnant young novelist who decides to utilize the terrible incident to recount the story of Medea by attending the trial of Laurence Coly, a Senegalese mother who is accused of killing her 15-month-old kid by abandoning her on a beach to be carried away by the tide. It is based on Fabienne Kabou's 2016 conviction for the same offense in a French court case. Diop went to the Kabou trial.

Rama travels from Paris to Saint-Omer to observe the Laurence Coly trial and report on the proceedings. Rama, who is four months pregnant, shares a number of similarities with Coly's situation, including being in a mixed-race relationship and having a difficult relationship with her own Senegalese immigrant mother. She intends to pen a contemporary rendition of the Greek Medea tale that centers on the incident. Rama's worries about her own life and her pregnancy grow as she learns more about Coly's existence and the isolation Coly experienced from her family and society while living in France.

A courtroom drama based on the 2013 true account of Fabienne Kabou, a Senegalese lady who abandoned her infant on a beach in Northern France, is directed by Alice Diop. The power systems in French culture that habitually fail and misinterpret Black women and African immigrants, as well as the sour-tasting methods of Western emotional manipulation, are magnified by Diop's lens.

Rama, our main character, is an academic with a complex—yet largely unexplored—relationship with her mother. The following day, she bids her husband goodbye and boards a train to Saint-Omer, a town with a large population of white people, after sitting idly through a family gathering. It is here that a court case involving a young mother named Laurence Coly, who has admitted to killing her 15-month-old kid, is scheduled to take place. The case has been dominating the news for weeks. Rama is interested in the case because she is writing a book about Medea, a mythological heroine who killed her own sons.

But once in the courtroom, where the specifics of the crime are described in minute, excruciating detail, Rama feels more and more overpowered. The majority of the footage focuses on Laurence's testimony as she recounts her past in a daze. She describes arriving in France from Senegal and quickly developing an interest in Descartes and Wittgenstein before falling in love with a 57-year-old married white Frenchman and moving in with him. She struggled with agoraphobia and sank into a deep melancholy after finding out she was pregnant. She soon began to believe that her family had cursed her with an "evil eye," and that magic was the only explanation for the circumstances that resulted in the death of her daughter. Her defense counsel is trying to plead insanity, meaning Laurence could serve her sentence in a hospital rather than a prison.

However, the most surprising revelations of the trial come from its minute aspects. The evidence of Laurence's ex-partner, who depicts the helpless lady he impregnated as paranoid, jealous, insane, and aggressive, is particularly illuminating. The proceedings have a distinctly literary feel to them, with a level of thought, patience, and stillness that captivates you. This is in stark contrast to the never-ending stream of courtroom dramas, which use soap-style theatrics and drain the genre of all emotional reality.

As the trial goes on, Kayije Kagame gives Rama an elegant stoicism that becomes more shattered and impactful, her scholarly intent being supplanted by pity and empathy for the witness. Guslagie Malanda is equally remarkable as Laurence; she wears her features like a mask while harboring a torrent of emotion just below the surface. The quiet and excellent directing of Diop, along with the warm, rich cinematography of Claire Mathon, hyper-focuses our attention in long takes. The score adds tension with a cacophony of breathing noises at one point when Rama and Laurence's breaths sync, making you feel your heart halt. This is especially true with the sound design.

It is a courtroom drama with two leads who have never met, and there is no conclusion. Saint-Omer is a spectacular achievement that compels you to puzzle through procedures lead only by your heart, which hammers in your chest like a gavel. It does this with piercing dignity and a refusal to give simple answers to the mountain of moral conundrums at play.

WATCH THE REVIEW VIDEO FOR MORE...