Writer: Alice Diop, Amrita David and Marie NDiaye
Director: Alice Diop
Infanticide is arguably the very worst crime of all, certainly from the journalistic perspective as mothers in particular suspected of killing their child are portrayed as pariahs. Alice Diop, Amrita David and Marie Ndiaye’s new film Saint Omer, an entrant into the Official Competition at this year’s BFI London Film Festival 2022, uses a courtroom scenario to investigate why this happens and the lack of support for female mental health and Post-natal Depression in the months and years after giving birth.
Academic Rama wants to start a project on the Medea complex and decides to attend the trial of a 20-something mother, Laurence, accused of killing her 15-month-old daughter Elise. Pleading sorcery, the days of the trial involve rigorous examination of the defendant and her lifestyle, as well as her much older married boyfriend. But with her own personal connection to the case, Rama starts to feel overwhelmed.
Diop, David and Ndiaye’s film is quite unlike any courtroom drama you will have seen, involving very long examination of Laurence by the presiding judge that lasts often for tens of minutes at a time. This is a writer’s film with very little camera movement, but Diop as Director employs simple cut shots that focus on different faces. This is a scrutinising affair, one that puts the audience in the position of a jury listening to the evidence and making up our own minds – a notion reinforced by the defence lawyer’s direct appeal to camera while making her closing argument.
The starkness of Diop’s visual approach is really engaging, rejecting the usual theatricals that accompany courtroom scenes in American dramas which favour the actor playing either lawyer, and instead forces the viewer to look largely at the defendant, to listen to what she says and draw inferences about her honesty from her body language and behaviour over several days.
And with these testimonies Diop, David and Ndiaye explore the loneliness and vulnerability of being a young, immigrant woman in France, the racism that makes assumption about her guilt and the lack of care for women around their pregnancies particularly when the social and economic circumstances of the women already make her an outcast. Arguably, the focus on Rama feels underdeveloped and acts merely as a frame for Laurence’s story but there is much to absorb in this two-hour piece.
Guslagie Malanga is quite ambiguous as Laurence, a composed and varied performance that offers a range of emotions designed to certify or deny her culpability. Malanga is in turns furious and malign, wretched and innocent, affecting and affected. A brief moment where she smiles at Rama, a mere flicker could be the evillest smile of admission or equally a nervous young women hoping to find connection with the only other person with her skin colour in the room.
Kayije Kagame’s Rama looks frightened for much of the film, worried about the effects of the case on her own mental health while there is good support from an ensemble acting as court officials. While a scandalous story about infanticide by a woman who admits her guilt should be a straightforward watch, Saint Omer is far more interested in challenging our preconceptions about what it means to have a child and the circumstances that shape the mother’s life.
Saint Omer is screening at the BFI London Film Festival 2022.
