1212 Saint Omer

[alacal2]

Saint Omer

I caught this yesterday at the London Film Festival. Alice Diop's film is ostensibly about a real life court case concerning the trial of a young Senegalese mother living in France accused of infanticide but what becomes a brilliant, unnerving, dislocatory study of maternity and identity where we as the audience are effectively put on trial. There are so many things going on in this film that it's going to take at least another viewing (if it hopefully gets a wide enough release) for me to completely make sense of although it strikes me that perhaps the intention is not to be ever completely understood. A real find in much the same that Beanpole was a couple of years back. I hope others get to see this as I'd really appreciate their thoughts.

[Soy Cuba]

I thoroughly enjoyed this film. Compelling courtroom drama from Alice Diop about a Senagalese mother living in France accused of a heinous crime.

It's directed so superbly and delicately - with one of the best performances of the year from Guslagie Malanda as Laurence Coly. The film is based on the true story of the trial of Fabienne Kabou, whose actions should probably remain unspoilered. Alice Diop, the film's director and co-writer, attended the trial. The film is therefore semi-autobiographical as we see a young woman attend the trial in the film. It is hugely moving and depicts themes of alienation, xenophobia and culture clashes. There's an almost Passion of Joan or Arcness to some scenes.

An astonishing debut feature and a real achievement - 9/10

[tenia]

Exact opposite on my end. Most characters felt poorly sketched, often in a way-too-stereotypical way. I know it's based on a real story, so maybe the real people were monodimensional too, but that make them monodimensional characters then. I also had issues with the theatrical acting, which made most of the main characters acting for the sake of acting, in particular for the main character. I found it hard, in a good part because of this, to have empathy for the main character, who speaks in a robotic overly-scripted way, and I'm not sure if it's a conscious choice of the movie in order to push the viewers to a distance... only for take him morally hostage at the very end, because it does seem to be looking for our empathy, or at least our sympathy, and then starts evoking obvious sociological elements that it never wanted to confront before. It's as if the movie never really knows what it wants to do.

In the end, the movie gives everyone the time to say everything and its opposite, so you have no idea who's lying and who isn't (but at the same time, the movie keeps repeating after 20 minutes that she's guilty over and over again, so no suspense here), and most of these people feel like they're doing so because they're just intensely inconsistant and probably kind of dumb. The old paramour of the main character, in particular, seems either the dumbest guy possible, having seemingly no clue what is happening around him (to the point I wondered if he was slightly mentally challenged), or a very poorly written character.

And there's also the character acting as a (very obvious) proxy for the viewer is here again played with such blank detachment (I wondered if the movie was testing the Kulechov effect) that when the movie finally decides to get out of this emotional void, it's in the most obvious and poor cinematic fashion (and thus it fails).

What a disappointment it was to me.

[Matt]

I finally caught up with this, perhaps only because we’re pulling the plug on our Hulu subscription this month. I think I avoided it so long because I was not sure of my capacity to withstand its inevitable emotional toll on me. I was right about that—I found it a devastating film—but am gratified to have seen it.

I understand a film’s marketing has to make complexity palatable, but to call this a “courtroom drama” as if it’s a John Grisham thriller is hilariously inadequate. Though it’s not a self-consciously “arty” film—it’s almost Bressonian or Akermanesque in its austerity—the reference above to The Passion of Joan of Arc is apt. There’s almost no camera movement, and there’s a late scene where the case is wrapping up that’s just shots of faces of people in the courtroom—jurors, court representatives, the defense attorney, members of the public—and it’s emotionally overwhelming. The cool rationality of the trial and the preternatural composure of the defendant break down and it’s just such a sad, life-altering moment for everyone in the room. The attempts of everyone to fit Coly and the circumstances of the trial into neat narratives—tragic Medea-like figure, coldly evil infanticidal mother, primitive and backward immigrant, helpless victim of psychosis—all prove inadequate, and the actual legal outcome becomes immatterial. Coly’s life is already ruined, her daughter is already dead, and no justice can be served. And the seemingly neutral observer (who had designs on turning the proceedings into a novel) is ashamed of her impulse to turn the real pain of others into something so crass as art.

At this point I knew the film was almost over and I was anxious (as I often am near the end of films that have been perfect up until that point) that it might not stick the landing. Then the film ended, wordlessly, with the accompaniment of Nina Simone’s “Little Girl Blue” and without the usual crashing bore of on-screen explanatory text concerning the outcome of either the real or fictionalized case and it was transcendent.

Can’t imagine Criterion will ever actually release this. They seem allergic to releasing anything made by anyone with the surname Diop. It would be great to have it with some of Diop’s documentaries though.

[Black Hat]

I think I avoided it so long because I was not sure of my capacity to withstand its inevitable emotional toll on me. I was right about that—I found it a devastating film—but am gratified to have seen it.

When I saw this, without thinking, I immediately invited a Senegalese friend to another screening but, then I realized this wasn't the right film to invite her to so I didn't push it, nor did she follow up. Still feel relieved about it too.

[domino harvey]

Coming March 26

[Matt]

Hell yeah! They sure called my bluff. I guess I didn’t expect much in the way of extras anyway but at least it’s getting released. Perfect cover for this film, too.

They should have announced Atlantiques and maybe La Petite Vendeuse de Soleil for the same month and had a little Diop blowout.

[jbeall]

At this point I knew the film was almost over and I was anxious (as I often am near the end of films that have been perfect up until that point) that it might not stick the landing. Then the film ended, wordlessly, with the accompaniment of Nina Simone’s “Little Girl Blue” and without the usual crashing bore of on-screen explanatory text concerning the outcome of either the real or fictionalized case and it was transcendent.

I also thought the ending was very affecting, and probably a necessary contrast to the more coldly intellectual juxtaposition of shots from Medea with the courtroom scenes a few minutes earlier. At any rate, I just finished watching it twenty minutes ago, so these are very initial impressions, but I actually would like to watch it a second time.

[FrauBlucher]

DVDBeaver

[Red Screamer]

I can’t get too excited about Saint Omer being a good movie and working in many of the ways described above, since most of its notes are fairly expected, but Alice Diop is clearly a very talented director. Her sensitivity for nuances of performance and rhythm, and her ability to sustain an intense, simmering mood for long, tricky scenes using small gestures and changes in camera placement are quite extraordinary for a someone making her fiction debut. The opening invocation of Duras ends up being earned — although the exploration of the abyss that stretches before the Other is not as profound or original as it is in Hiroshima mon amour, India Song, &c — through the force of Diop’s harsh, disorienting minimalism. Claire Mathon’s vivid cinematography (a key to Guiraudie and Sciamma’s recent work) also deserves credit for that.

Something we wouldn’t get in Duras is the attention to discourse, like key moments where the actors speak directly into the lens. Though I’ve come across reviews that take the lawyer’s closing statement as a sincere plea for audience sympathy, I think it’s more complicated than that.

Spoiler

One, it would go against the distance the film takes up to that point (though the shots of mothers crying in the courtroom is itself a break in the film’s style and emotional affect, as Matt points out, especially when there’s a jump cut to Coly breaking down in tears). And two, the lawyer’s speech uses a plainly confused rhetoric. In a film that’s partially about the limits of western reason as a universal foundation of judgement, phrases like “it’s not poetry, it’s science” are suspect — though not as suspect as dismissals of non-scientific reasoning and non-Christian religion/mythology as untrustworthy that then go on to use their language to justify her closing appeal and its ideas on motherhood: Coly’s dream of her daughter taking refuge in the defense lawyer’s robe (!), the “chimeric” cells that are supposed to prove scientifically the existence of an unbreakable connection between mothers and their children, &c, all culminating in the lawyer shifting the context of the word “monster” over the course of her speech, from infanticide to sociopathy to mythological beings to motherhood at large. I read these details as ironic on Diop / Ndiaye’s part, though not necessarily critical of the lawyer. What else can she do, or say, in such an impossible situation?