Saint Omer begins and ends the same way, with the sounds of a mother’s breath layered over a black screen. Exhausted, worn down by not just the weight of the children they carry but also the expectations thrust upon them, these mothers labor on, waiting for their final rest.
But between these gasps for air, Saint Omer feels almost like a lifeless affair, taking place almost entirely in an antiseptic French courtroom. Throughout, director Alice Diop crafts a clear-eyed ode to immigrant mothers, in all their complexity.
Saint Omer brings viewers into the courtroom via Rama (Kayije Kagame), an author of some success researching her next novel, an adaptation of the myth of Medea, the mother who slaughtered her children in an act of defiance. She’s come to learn about Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanda), a young Senegalese woman accused of killing her infant daughter.
Over the course of the trial, Rama comes to identify with Coly. But Diop quickly untethers the proceedings from Rama’s perspective. Instead, the celebrated French documentarian crafts her first narrative feature using direct, unadorned shots of the characters, putting the audience in the courtroom. In long unbroken takes, the camera watches as the judge (Valérie Dréville), the defender (Aurélia Petit), and the prosecutor (Robert Cantarella) question, accuse, and more often, attempt to explain Coly. In one of the few fluid shots of the movie, the camera passes back and forth from defender to prosecutor as they choose members of the jury. Diop and cinematographer Claire Mathon emphasize the mundane aspects of the procedure, portraying the selection as meaningless bureaucracy, allowing the accused only a small space in the corner of the frame.
Indeed, Diop’s script, which she co-wrote with Amrita David and Marie N’Diaye, often functions like a legal procedural. The movie presents several testimonies in real time, often without cutting to reaction shots. When French national Luc Dumontet explains how he loved Coly—despite being thirty years her senior—and their late daughter, Diop resists the urge to sway our opinion. We simply watch as he protests his innocence, whether he’s rationalizing his refusal to leave his wife for Coly, or accusing her of lying to the court.
While most movies would condemn Dumontet simply by placing him against our protagonist, a much younger immigrant woman, Saint Omer has no interest in playing to our sympathies. From the outset of the trial, Coly admits that she did indeed kill her daughter Elise.
Late one night, we learn, Coly took the child to the ocean and laid her on the beach. She went back to her room and slept peacefully until the waves took the girl away, only for the corpse to be found by a fisherman.
Throughout the trial, Coly is caught in lie after lie, attributing her actions to some ill-defined sorcery and refusing to say more. Even when the judge seems to give space for the defendant to explain herself, Coly refuses, answering “I don’t know” to questions about her difficulties in the French academy or strained relationship with her parents in Senegal.
Instead of forcing viewers’ responses, Diop puts a faith in her performers that pays off in dividends.
Instead of forcing viewers’ responses, Diop puts faith in her performers, a faith that pays off in dividends. Malanda plays Coly as a pillar of quiet strength. She refuses to look away from the judge or Dumontet or even the prosecutor as they level charges against her and narrate her life to her. But even as her face stays still, Malanda allows her chest to quiver in fear and frustration as it tries to hold the few breaths that snuck through her visage.
Kagame gets to bring a wider range of emotions to Rama—but only when she’s outside of the courtroom. In her hotel room, Rama lets the sadness weigh down her shoulders, layers a polite voice over her inner turmoil when talking with her publisher, and breaks apart with anxiety in front of Rama’s partner Adrien (Thomas de Pourquery). In the courtroom, Rama all but shuts down, struggling to avoid identifying with her research subject Coly. She breaks only once, when Coly looks out from the stand and smiles at her, the only other Black woman in the room.
In moments such as these, Diop relaxes her rigid style and lets in signs of life. Throughout the movie, flashbacks to Rama’s childhood interrupt the story, suddenly cutting to scenes of young Rama (played by Binta Thiam as a child and Coumba-Mar Thiam as a teen) with her immigrant mother Seynabou (played by Seyna Kane in flashbacks and Adama Diallo Tamba in the present). Diop forgoes the usual signifiers of flashbacks, such as sound cues or visual flourishes, and lets the scene speak for itself, refusing to explain young Rama’s behavior and what drives her away from Seynabou.
Conversely, Diop does use music to suggest a sympathy for Seynabou that grows in Rama during Coly’s trial. With the exception of Nina Simone’s “Little Girl Blue,” skillfully deployed at the movie’s climax, the film’s score consists of a capella music that foregrounds breath, highlighting human vulnerability and persistence.
For viewers catching Saint Omer during its January theatrical release in the United States, the most important part is perhaps the trial’s end. That’s when the defender looks directly at the camera and makes her case. “This is the story of a phantom woman,” she declares. “A woman whom nobody sees. Whom nobody knows.” The defender goes on to describe a Senegalese woman tormented by French society, treated as worthless, driven mad, and forced to finally kill her own daughter.
It’s tempting for Americans, especially white male viewers like me, to agree with this assessment. We see in Saint Omer a condemnation of Western law, the racism and sexism in our courts, and the Eurocentrism in our philosophy. But nowhere in the movie does Diop support the defender’s story. Saint Omer isn’t about making demands for change or giving Western crusaders the opportunity to do the right thing. It especially isn’t interested in explaining Coly to anyone. It’s simply asking us to stop and listen, so we might hear the tired and persistent sound of mothers breathing.