Saint Omer: a trial film as relentless as it is impressive [critique]

For her first fiction, Alice Diop questions the mysteries that pushed a woman to infanticide. The forces of embodiment and staging are overwhelming.

This evening Arte is interested in a taboo in our societies: infanticide. How can a mother kill her child? Is it possible to rebuild oneself after committing such a crime?

In 2022, director Alice Diop, hailed so far for his documentary worksigned his first fiction with Saint Omera trial film relating as closely as possible to reality the journey of an infanticide mother. The film will be shown at 8:55 p.m., followed by the report Mothers in Life. Both are already visible, free replayon the channel's website.

Below we share our review of Saint Omer, accompanied by interviews with their main actresses, Kayije Kagame and Guslagie Malanda.

Guslagie Malanda: “La Bardot de La Vérité helped me for Saint Omer”

Tone on tone, Laurence is invisible, or almost. Yet all eyes converge on her. In the accused box of the Saint-Omer assize court, the young woman wears a brown vest which blends in with the woodwork of the court. From his ebony face, only the whites of his penetrating eyes shine through. A character erased, condemned in advance, mute, she therefore appears, assigned to her rightful place, her body (con)fused into the decor. If this aesthetic camouflage seems to induce concealment, it will, in a reverse gesture, act as a revealer. Florence hasn't opened her mouth to answer the questions yet, but when she does, that will be another matter. We will soon only see his face, his presence will become omniscient, almost divine, and for us it will be a matter of looking differently at things that were presented to us in the fog of prejudices. Saint-Omer is inspired by the “Fabienne Kabou” affair, named after this infanticide mother who drowned her child on a beach in Berck in 2013. Fabienne – here Florence for the purposes of the fiction – is originally from Dakar, from a A family of rather wealthy intellectuals, she arrived in Paris and studied philosophy. Florence met a much older artist with whom she would have a child. In this route there are many shaded areas and lead to this beach in the North of France on which Florence left her barely one-year-old baby at nightfall, leaving him at the mercy of the rising tide. Modern Medea.

Saint-Omer is a frontal, direct feature film. Most often fixed plans prevent dispersion. Like Florence (Guslagie Malanda, impressive) It is, however, a real trial film, with its quest for truth, where the convolutions are numerous. The line, however, seems clear and sharp. Not that Alice Diop is moving forward with her certainties, and if she questions the actions of an accused whose guilt seems proven, it is above all her voice that the filmmaker wants to make heard. To understand the inconceivable, you have to know how to listen, question your conception of reason and read between the lines of a speech that is not one. Alice Diop admitted last month in First where she was on the cover: “ I film to give form to my anger. » The one who until now has mainly worked in the documentary form (The Death of Danton, Towards tenderness, We…), today seeks in fiction a new way of restoring confiscated or barely audible words, and questions the way in which this helps to better understand the complexity of reality.

For this exchange to work, you must succeed in meeting the gaze of one or another and perceive a form of recognition there. Among those who attend the trial, there is Rama (Kayije Kagame), a novelist troubled in body and soul by this tragedy. This is where the film gets a little unbalanced. The power of Florence is so strong, her confidence so disarming, that the reverse shot cannot fight. Rama, alone in her hotel room, cowers. Once back in the box, Florence's gaze once again fills the space with all its mysteries. Another force present will manage to measure the scope of what is at stake here. Florence's lawyer (Aurélia Petit) gets up. Her black dress immediately stands out from the decor, its apparent softness connects with Florence. His speech is astonishingly intelligent. Silence falls. It is now charged with intensity. Saint-Omerdoubly rewarded at the last Venice Film Festival (best first feature film and Grand Jury Prize) was chosen to represent France at the Oscars and won the Jean Vigo Prize.

Trailer:

Kayije Kagame: “I almost missed out on Saint Omer because of a bad casting”