Either way, the result does not make for pleasant viewing. Coly (Malaanda) prances about with a superior attitude saying unfathomable things like “If I’m lying, I can’t know why” and about her actions on the beach “I hope this trial will give me the answer”. Only in a French film could you hear dialogue like this! Dialogue that, not only condescends to and irritates the viewer, but also degrades the character who is speaking such nonsense.
When Neon picked up Alice Diop’s narrative debut “Saint Omer”, the runner-up at last year’s Venice Film Festival, people thought it was a coup. It wasn’t. The reasons are many and informative.
- The obvious one is that the film is a flop.
- Although it was picked as France’s entry for Best International Film and made the shortlist it was not nominated.
- Everyone thought it had the “Spirits” Best International Film locked but, in one of the few surprises of the afternoon, it lost to the far superior ” Joyland” from Pakistan.
- Film Festivals can be very deceiving. In the middle of all the hoopla, it can be difficult to see that what you thought was a masterwork was a lemon.
- And “Saint Omer” is a lemon of the sourest flavor.
- It takes everything we hate about French Cinema and everything we hate about feminism and the #MeToo movement and blends them synergistically into a pompous and naive piece of propaganda.
The film chronicles the trial of a Franco-Senegalese mother named Fabienne Kabou who committed infanticide by leaving her baby on the beach to be claimed by the incoming tide. The case was a sensation in France, not just because of the callousness of the crime itself, but because of the mother’s African colonial origin and also because she was not your typical Senegalese immigrant. A graduate student with a genius-level IQ she was writing a thesis on Wittgenstein. The child’s father was an older, white Frenchman Kabou had lived with for a while. He was barely in the picture although Kabou accused him of putting an evil eye on her. Kabou never gave a clear explanation for her actions saying at different times that “It was simpler that way” and then that “Even a stupid person would not do what I did”. She showed no remorse and was rightly convicted and given a long prison sentence which she is currently serving.
Enter Diop, a former documentary filmmaker. Diop had attended Kabou’s trial and was moved enough to make Kabou the center of her first narrative feature with her documentarian’s eye on the trial. Kabou is now called Laurence Coly and is played by Guslagie Malaanda. Diop also has a stand-in; a Franco-Senegalese novelist called Rama played by Kayijr Kagame. Rama is pregnant and, although you would expect this to add an extra dynamic to the proceedings, it doesn’t. Rama is a very serious writer. Kagame never smiles during the entire picture. She is also a major irritation not only because of her unrelenting earnestness but because she is not needed. Why didn’t Diop just film the trial directly? Why did she feel the events needed to be filtered through her proxy?
Either way, the result does not make for pleasant viewing. Coly (Malaanda) prances about with a superior attitude saying unfathomable things like “If I’m lying, I can’t know why” and about her actions on the beach “I hope this trial will give me the answer”. Only in a French film could you hear dialogue like this! Dialogue that, not only condescends to and irritates the viewer, but also degrades the character who is speaking such nonsense.
The final insult is that we don’t even hear the verdict or the sentence. It’s as if Diop was convinced that Kabou/Coly was innocent and wanted her audience to think so. How anyone could have had even a shred of admiration for this movie is beyond me!
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