St. Omer review

There is an accepted objectivity to raw images. It is some of the strongest evidence that can be presented in a court case and is often easier to believe than human testimony. In 2016, Alice Diop, a French filmmaker who is familiar with the raw shooting of documentaries including you will see the tenderness (2016) e cacumen (2020), attends the trial of Fabienne Kabou, accused of killing her young daughter in 2013. Inspired to tell the story but unable to film the real events, Diop turns to narrative cinema.

In St. Omer – shot largely as raw footage, documentary techniques applied to fiction – Diop is keenly aware of his own subjectivity, which in turn becomes an intrusion on the audience. His fictional stunt double Rama, ably played by Kayije Kagame, is a writer whose immediate thought is that the case of a mother killing her 15-month-old daughter would fit a modern version of the ancient Greek tragedy. Medea by Euripede. We see Rama reflecting on the text, watching Maria Callas play Medea in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1969 film adaptation, trying to figure out how she might connect to it through her complicated feelings about motherhood that emerged in the process.

That’s where the power is St. Omer lies. We see and hear Guslagie Malanga give a nuanced flawless performance as the convict Laurence Coly and her lawyer, played by Aurélia Petit. Cinematographer Claire Mathon, who shot Céline Sciamma’s film Portrait of a lady on fire, holds the frame uncomfortably as the breath of Caroline Shaw’s “Courante” overlays the soundtrack to evoke the claustrophobic atmosphere of the small courtroom. These filmic dimensions are new to Diop’s cinema, but raise philosophical questions, essentially framing the audience as Laurence’s jury. St. Omer directly attacks the unconscious bias surrounding cultural difference in a seemingly objective legal system.