In Saint Omer, there is the mother, and the sea, at high tide, in front of which a woman lays her 15-month-old daughter, one autumn evening, so that the waves carry her away. The black-skinned accused finds herself in the box of the Assize Court of the small town of Pas-de-Calais. A black woman confronts the prejudices of downgraded white people. And this powerful postcolonial tableau looks deep into our eyes.
Inspired by the trial of Fabienne Kabou – she abandoned her child on the beach at Berck-sur-Mer on November 19, 2013, and was sentenced on appeal in 2017 to fifteen years’ imprisonment – ??Alice Diop focuses on the complex personality of the heroine, here named Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanda). This is seen through the eyes of another black woman, Rama, novelist (Kayije Kagame) and alter ego of the filmmaker, who came to attend the trial for the writing of her second novel. The interpretation of the two actresses installs an almost fantastic atmosphere in this film steeped in anguish.
Alice Diop made the trip herself, in 2016, so disturbed was she by the story of Fabienne Kabou. With the accused, a native like her from Senegal, she felt a confused mixture of distance and closeness. All the complexity of this black woman had to surface on the screen, far from the simplistic clichés.
Painting the portrait of a woman
Throughout this affair, the director was struck by the things left unsaid around the skin color of the infanticidal mother. His erudite language and his elocution astonished many, like a remnant of ordinary racism. Then the discomfort grew when Fabienne Kabou showed herself to be brittle and manipulative, coldly assuming her act, freezing the jurors.
In Saint Omer, the portrait of the accused is significantly softened compared to that of Fabienne Kabou. The important thing here is not to “stick” to reality, but to paint the portrait of a woman with all the care and excess that the great painters brought to their models. Alice Diop’s pictorial references range from La Belle Ferronnière, by Leonardo da Vinci, painted between 1495 and 1497, to Grape Wine (1966), by the American Andrew Wyeth, a portrait of an extraordinarily modern wanderer. Two works echoed by several close-ups of the accused (as well as the film poster).
You have to imagine the film as a photo of the Kabou affair, which Alice Diop would have left to soak in a bath, to reveal another texture, more cloudy and more universal. No doubt it is for this reason that this great political film, close to the thriller, seduced the jury of the Venice Film Festival, where it was twice rewarded, in 2022, with a Silver Lion (Grand Jury Prize) and a Lion of the future for a first film, before having the César for best first film in 2023.
