Saint Omer (2022)
(Saint-Omer)
Country: FR
Technical: col 122m
Director: Alice Diop
Cast: Kayije Kagame, Guslagie Malanda, Valérie Dréville
Synopsis:
A young author and lecturer travels to Saint-Omer to attend the trial for infanticide of another woman of African descent, as research for her new book. As she listens to the woman's testimony, she becomes increasingly disturbed by her ambivalent feelings towards her pregnancy and the relationship she had with her own mother.
Review:
The film maker's background in documentary makes for a lengthy and painstaking forensic drama, itself an enlightening window on the French judicial system, interspersed with more mysterious, subjective-style flashbacks within the heroine's psyche. An early glimpse of her professional life via cleverly counterpointed footage of punitive post-WW2 head shaving with a Marguerite Duras extract from Hiroshima mon amour provides a foreshadowing of the defendant's ultimate transfiguration through the mouth of her counsel, asking us all to take a step back from appearances. Other details, such as the removal of a hotel blanket and its replacement with a sleeping bag quilt, remain unexplained or, like the title, implicit.
(Saint-Omer)
Country: FR
Technical: col 122m
Director: Alice Diop
Cast: Kayije Kagame, Guslagie Malanda, Valérie Dréville
Synopsis:
A young author and lecturer travels to Saint-Omer to attend the trial for infanticide of another woman of African descent, as research for her new book. As she listens to the woman's testimony, she becomes increasingly disturbed by her ambivalent feelings towards her pregnancy and the relationship she had with her own mother.
Review:
The film maker's background in documentary makes for a lengthy and painstaking forensic drama, itself an enlightening window on the French judicial system, interspersed with more mysterious, subjective-style flashbacks within the heroine's psyche. An early glimpse of her professional life via cleverly counterpointed footage of punitive post-WW2 head shaving with a Marguerite Duras extract from Hiroshima mon amour provides a foreshadowing of the defendant's ultimate transfiguration through the mouth of her counsel, asking us all to take a step back from appearances. Other details, such as the removal of a hotel blanket and its replacement with a sleeping bag quilt, remain unexplained or, like the title, implicit.
(Saint-Omer)
Country: FR
Technical: col 122m
Director: Alice Diop
Cast: Kayije Kagame, Guslagie Malanda, Valérie Dréville
Synopsis:
A young author and lecturer travels to Saint-Omer to attend the trial for infanticide of another woman of African descent, as research for her new book. As she listens to the woman's testimony, she becomes increasingly disturbed by her ambivalent feelings towards her pregnancy and the relationship she had with her own mother.
Review:
The film maker's background in documentary makes for a lengthy and painstaking forensic drama, itself an enlightening window on the French judicial system, interspersed with more mysterious, subjective-style flashbacks within the heroine's psyche. An early glimpse of her professional life via cleverly counterpointed footage of punitive post-WW2 head shaving with a Marguerite Duras extract from Hiroshima mon amour provides a foreshadowing of the defendant's ultimate transfiguration through the mouth of her counsel, asking us all to take a step back from appearances. Other details, such as the removal of a hotel blanket and its replacement with a sleeping bag quilt, remain unexplained or, like the title, implicit.