Saint Omer: Unveil the Depths of Motherhood

Release Date：Jan/13/2023

Genre：Drama

Director：Alice Diop

Cast：Guslagie Malanda、Kayije Kagame

Viola's Rating：8.2

It’s hard to imagine a mother killing her own daughter, but everything has a reason behind it, or has it? Director Alice Diop’s debut feature film, Saint Omer, which was released limited in the US on Jan 13, 2023, successfully discussed motherhood through its court procedural format.

Inspired by the true story of Fabienne Kabou, this courtroom drama follows Rama, a novelist who attends the trial of Laurence Coly at the Saint-Omer Criminal Court to use her story to write a modern-day adaptation of the ancient myth of Medea, but things don't go as expected.

Director Alice Diop utilized masterful camera movements to narrate the story through gazes and silences as well as words. Much of the time, the camera’s not on Lawrence or Rama, but from someone else’s perspective. Instead of being an outsider looking at what’s happening in the court, the audience will feel that they’re part of the trial.

With the protagonist’s background as a literature professor and a novelist, literary references are used in Saint Omer. The ancient Greek tragedy by Euripides, Medea, depicts an enraged woman who kills her children to get revenge on her husband. In the tragedy, Medea doesn’t receive the punishment due to Deus ex machina, a dragon-drawn chariot that transports her to safety. Although Fabienne Kabou, was sentenced to 20 years in prison, the film apparently declares its stand.

Instead of telling the story of Laurence Coly alone, Saint Omer presents the mirror images of Laurence and Rama. Be it their similar mother and daughter relationship or racial expectation, Rama recognized something in Lawrence, and that triggered moviegoers to reflect on themselves.

Saint Omer might look like a courtroom drama, but the theme of it is actually motherhood. Through the interrogation, Lawrence explains her daily life, emotions, and experiences from pregnancy to the time when her daughter was 15 months old. Aside from what’s said in the courtroom, Director Alice Diop also leaves the obvious wide open and something ambiguous for the audience to ponder about.

Earlier this year, a Hong Kong flick, The Sparring Partner, was also in a courtroom format, and many of the crime scenes are demonstrated in the motion picture. Unlike The Sparring Partner, instead of displaying Lawrence’s past, Saint Omer follows Rama to her life and memory. Through her experiences and flashbacks, moviegoers can somehow guess her thoughts on Lawrence’s case. 

Although most of the scenes in Saint Omer are in the court, innocence or guilt isn’t the most important. After watching the movie, the audience will definitely have more on their mind, and that’s what Director and Lawrence would want to see.

Picture Credit: IMDb, atmovies