Saint Omer
Alice Diop, an accomplished documentary filmmaker in 2016, listened to Fabienne Kabou’s haunting testimony in a Saint Omer courtroom. Why did Kabou do such a thing? Kabou’s answers (“It was simpler that way.”) were vague and ultimately unsatisfying as far as motive goes. She came up paranoid but fit to be tried after being evaluated by psychiatrists. Forces of evil threatening her child is what she spoke about. It seemed like something magnetic propelled the pregnant woman with Senegalese parents into attending this trial. Her motherhood to be, her mother and herself being “othered” in her birth nation all got figured out alongside thoughts on what had been said by Kabou during the trial while still under its spell. Diop’s powerful personal connection led her to make “Saint Omer”, which is also an incredibly strong movie indeed!
What does Kabou’s story have to tell us? What messages are being conveyed? Diop, in her film, never really answers these questions. “Saint Omer,” that is to say, doesn’t answer them by presenting the questions though there’s nothing “just” about such an approach. By giving us the questions and by giving us the swirls of empathetic identification between Rama (Kayije Kagame), attending the trial, and Laurence (Guslagie Malanga), the accused woman in the dock, Diop lets the movie seep with anxieties, or even confusion, and subterranean pull.
We don’t always know why something has an impact on us, for an artist it is enough just to know that it did. As she told Variety: “I wanted to recreate my experience of listening to another woman’s story while interrogating myself, facing my own difficult truths. The narrative had to trace a series of emotional states that can lead to catharsis. It’s like accelerated psychotherapy.”
Rama first appears lecturing on Marguerite Duras (whose influence on “Saint Omer” is evident in its silences that provoke thought, its focus on women, interest in what goes on in so called margins). She is a novelist and a teacher. She is also a woman who has achieved much and who enjoys contentment within her relationship they are expecting a child together soon but now she must complete research for her next book: a modern day Medea. There is another story happening in Saint Omer, one with echoes of Medea within it. Rama travels there with this small suitcase packed as if telling herself it is for research but not knowing why she actually does so then sits down inside courtroom watching Laurence walk up onto witness stand alone all by herself no family around not connected at all into any community beyond those walls there where people like Laurence go when they are accused of doing things.
But when we look through our own eyes at what happened there, it becomes a different kind of looking altogether. Moreover, sometimes Rama’s face listening is the only way in that works directly for us. Laurence tells her story straight even though answers come out expressing trauma or terror or ambivalence. The judge (Valérie Dréville) wants to know what the fuck went down here but keeps getting lost by some of Laurence’s replies. There’s something about her being “other,” something not inside normal boundaries French life recognizes as legitimate, you can feel it hanging all around in those dusty old rooms where justice gets done day after day year after year century upon century world without end amen hallelujah thank god almighty thank god we’re free in this his great nation under heaven on earth right now today forevermore.
What happens next is hard for me to put into words without robbing it of its power but I will try my best anyway because there has never been anything like “Saint Omer.” Some scenes have a clear style that doesn’t distract from Malanga’s performance during Laurence’s testimony beautifully shot by Claire Mathon, who also lensed “Portrait Lady Fire” while others use lots more impressionism to create dreamy flashbacks and home movies woven together as Rama falls apart alone with herself in hotel room full of feelings about baby growing inside her belly and memories mother left behind inside her heart and knowledge outsider ness despite being born right here smack dab midst France Kagame does heartbreaking work through these moments every single one them true crime stuff seeping back toward personal again forcing us remember always both directions at once how these things work together on cases such as this where everything overlaps with everything else until nothing makes sense anymore except maybe love itself still beating somewhere deep down beneath everything else around us right now today forevermore so help us god almighty amen hallelujah thank heaven we’re free.
Diop’s films, especially the prize winning We, are a close examination of communities of immigrants. Such groups could be invisible to most people and not considered part of French national life political, social or cultural. She made a decision to shoot Saint Omer not as a documental movie but as feature film which was far beyond prohibition to use cameras in courtrooms. What attracted her attention was not only the case itself but her attitude towards it. In an interview with W Magazine she said that she looked round the courtroom and saw that most people there were women.
Diop wondered what these women found in this story? What questions did they have? “I don’t understand Fabienne Kabou because I didn’t understand during the trial and I still don’t now”, says Diop in an interview with Slant Magazine, “And because I don’t understand her she makes me question myself.”
Although fascination by true crime has recently peaked again, it is not new at all. Diop knows about many cliches used while making true crime documentaries and does everything differently from them on purpose. Thus, “Saint Omer” becomes a broader reflection on contemporary French life, on immigrants’ experience and on the shadows we bring along with us when we move into another space. Diop remembers how much she likes Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood because here it is not only about the crime but also about the world around it: flow of American culture that created such cold-blooded killers as Dick Hickock and Perry Smith; why did this happen is almost irrelevant faced with so much evidence.
Having arrived in France from Senegal for studies at university, Fabienne Kabou wrote a thesis about Ludwig Wittgenstein whose ideas intrigued her most. When Laurence told this to the court during Saint Omer, nobody believed her even less than they believed in reaction for committing murder. Judge, lawyers couldn’t understand how come someone coming from Senegal would take interest in Austrian philosopher born 19th century. Their ignorance insults every intellectually curious person who wants to know more than personal experience can teach . They think she’s lying about topic of her thesis. Maybe they haven’t heard that language has limits according to Wittgenstein Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
Silence speaks if allowed to and it speaks with many voices, saying many things we need to hear or understand better. This is what Alice Diop knows well as a filmmaker. Saint Omer teaches us how to listen for these voices.
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