Alice Diop’s Saint Omer brings the French filmmaker into the realm of fiction for the first time, but preserves her documentary respect for the evidence of the audience’s eyes. A sober, pared-down courtroom drama, Saint Omer initially makes little effort to comment on its action, at times feeling more like presentation than representation. The unadorned quality of the film can be laborious, particularly in the early stretches of the trial that’s at the center of the story, but Diop earns the effort she asks of her audience, methodically allowing a strange, intangible, but nevertheless palpable mix of emotions to emerge from the situation itself.
It’s certainly a choice, and the expression of an ethos, that Diop keeps the viewer locked in to repeating pairs of alternating camera angles for significant portions of the trial. We see the defendant, Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanda), a Senegalese immigrant and...
It’s certainly a choice, and the expression of an ethos, that Diop keeps the viewer locked in to repeating pairs of alternating camera angles for significant portions of the trial. We see the defendant, Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanda), a Senegalese immigrant and...
- 3/25/2024
- by Pat Brown
- Slant Magazine
Chicago – Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com audio film review for “Saint Omer,” the French film narrative debut of documentary maker Alice Diop, based on a real trial that she had observed. Currently in select theaters, see local listings.
Rating: 4.0/5.0
Centered on a murder trial that focuses on Rama (Kayiije Kagame), a literature professor who wants to write about Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanda), who is about to be judged in court for drowning her toddler daughter in the ocean. As the trial proceeds, Rama increases her own anxiety about being newly pregnant and the relationship with her mother … Laurence and Rama are both in France through roots in African Senegal, and that circumstance unite the two characters together.
”Saint Omer” is currently in select theaters. See local listings. Featuring Kayije Kagame, Guslagie Malanda, Valérie Dréville, Aurélia Petit and Xavier Maly. Screenplay by Alice Diop, Amrita David and Marie N’Diaye. Directed by Alice Diop.
Rating: 4.0/5.0
Centered on a murder trial that focuses on Rama (Kayiije Kagame), a literature professor who wants to write about Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanda), who is about to be judged in court for drowning her toddler daughter in the ocean. As the trial proceeds, Rama increases her own anxiety about being newly pregnant and the relationship with her mother … Laurence and Rama are both in France through roots in African Senegal, and that circumstance unite the two characters together.
”Saint Omer” is currently in select theaters. See local listings. Featuring Kayije Kagame, Guslagie Malanda, Valérie Dréville, Aurélia Petit and Xavier Maly. Screenplay by Alice Diop, Amrita David and Marie N’Diaye. Directed by Alice Diop.
- 1/26/2023
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
Saint Omer Review — Saint Omer (2022) Film Review, a movie directed by Alice Diop, written by Amrita David and Alice Diop and starring Kayije Kagame, Guslagie Malanda, Xavier Maly, Thomas de Pourquery, Salimata Kamate, Robert Cantarella, Aurelia Petit and Louise Lemoine Torres. Alice Diop’s heavy but absorbing dramatic French film, Saint Omer, is certainly [...]
Continue reading: Film Review: Saint Omer (2022): Filmmaker Alice Diop’s Courtroom Drama is Captivating and Marvelously Acted...
Continue reading: Film Review: Saint Omer (2022): Filmmaker Alice Diop’s Courtroom Drama is Captivating and Marvelously Acted...
- 1/17/2023
- by Thomas Duffy
- Film-Book
Alice Diop’s Saint Omer is a movie about a trial. But it is not strictly concerned with the question of innocence or guilt as a problem of the law. Far more complex, the movie finds, is the problem of how we should feel about the moral authority of the question — and the moral authority of the domain in which it can be asked. It is a movie about language and testimony, mothers and daughters, and the specific burden of a Black immigrant woman who finds herself subjected to the French legal gaze.
- 1/14/2023
- by K. Austin Collins
- Rollingstone.com
This review originally ran September 7, 2022, in conjunction with the film’s premiere at the Venice Film Festival.
“A woman who has killed her baby can’t really expect any sympathy,” says Laurence Coly, who is accused of that very crime, in celebrated documentarian Alice Diop’s narrative debut “Saint Omer,” making its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival. So, the logical question is: Why would anyone watch such a film? Fortunately, Diop gives us many reasons.
Diop — whose 2021 documentary “We” (“Nous”), revolving around Black immigrant communities in the Paris suburbs, won top honors at the Berlin International Film Festival — doesn’t abandon her nonfiction roots. Truth also fuels her feature film. In it, well-spoken, educated Senegalese immigrant Laurence Coly, like the real Fabienne Kabou only a few years back, stands trial in quaint Saint-Omer in northeastern France for killing her 15-month-old daughter.
There to capture it all is pregnant...
“A woman who has killed her baby can’t really expect any sympathy,” says Laurence Coly, who is accused of that very crime, in celebrated documentarian Alice Diop’s narrative debut “Saint Omer,” making its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival. So, the logical question is: Why would anyone watch such a film? Fortunately, Diop gives us many reasons.
Diop — whose 2021 documentary “We” (“Nous”), revolving around Black immigrant communities in the Paris suburbs, won top honors at the Berlin International Film Festival — doesn’t abandon her nonfiction roots. Truth also fuels her feature film. In it, well-spoken, educated Senegalese immigrant Laurence Coly, like the real Fabienne Kabou only a few years back, stands trial in quaint Saint-Omer in northeastern France for killing her 15-month-old daughter.
There to capture it all is pregnant...
- 1/12/2023
- by Ronda Racha Penrice
- The Wrap
Saint Omer Trailer — Alice Diop‘s Saint Omer (2022) movie trailer has been released by Super Ltd. The Saint Omer trailer stars Kayije Kagame, Guslagie Malanda, Valérie Dréville, Aurélia Petit, and Xavier Maly. Crew Amrita David, Alice Diop, and Marie Ndiaye wrote the screenplay for Saint Omer. Plot Synopsis Saint Omer‘s plot synopsis: “Saint Omer court of law. [...]
Continue reading: Saint Omer (2022) Movie Trailer: A Murder Case Shakes a Young Novelist’s Convictions in Alice Diop’s Film...
Continue reading: Saint Omer (2022) Movie Trailer: A Murder Case Shakes a Young Novelist’s Convictions in Alice Diop’s Film...
- 12/6/2022
- by Rollo Tomasi
- Film-Book
"Sorcery was the only logical conclusion." Super Ltd has revealed the official US trailer for the acclaimed French drama Saint Omer, which first premiered at the 2022 Venice Film Festival this fall a few months ago. It won the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize at that fest, before going on to screen at the Toronto, New York, London, Busan, Hamptons, Ghent, and Chicago Film Festivals. The fictional film follows Rama, a novelist who attends the trial of Laurence Coly at the Saint-Omer Criminal Court to use her story to write a modern-day adaptation of the ancient myth of "Medea", but things don't go as expected. As the trial continues, the words of the accused and witness testimonies will shake Rama's convictions. Starring Kayije Kagame, Guslagie Malanda, Valérie Dréville, Aurélia Petit, and Xavier Maly. While many critics are fans of this film, I did not like it much at all. It's excruciatingly dry and dull,...
- 12/6/2022
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
"She's a hard worker. As good as any man." Music Box Films has released the official Us trailer for the Us release of Xavier Beauvois' new French film The Guardians, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival last year. This indie drama is set during World War I, otherwise known as "The Great War" at the time, and it's about the few local women who are left behind to work on a family farm. Everything gets disrupted when the sons return on leave, and "Francine becomes the center of a familial disturbance." Oh boy. Romance always messing things up. The cast is lead by Nathalie Baye and Iris Bry, and also includes Laura Smet, Cyril Descours, Gilbert Bonneau, Olivier Rabourdin, Nicolas Giraud, Mathilde Viseux-Ely, and Xavier Maly. This looks like a very moving, meaningful film about the power of "love, loss, and resilience." Here's the official Us trailer (+ poster) for Xavier Beauvois' The Guardians,...
- 3/18/2018
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
Cannes Film Festival winner Xavier Beauvois Incendies gets new videos. Clips are up from Of Gods and Men, Sony Pictures Classics, starring Lambert Wilson, Michael Lonsdale, Olivier Rabourdin, Philippe Laudenbach, Jacques Herlin, Loïc Pichon and Xavier Maly. The film is helmed by Xavier Beauvois who wrote alongside Etienne Comar and is a multiple award winner and nominee in numerous film festivals. The historical drama was selected as a winner of the Best Foreign Language Film by the National Board of Review. Pic opens on February 25th, exclusive to New York and Los Angeles...
- 1/6/2011
- Upcoming-Movies.com
Cannes Film Festival winner Xavier Beauvois Incendies gets new videos. Clips are up from Of Gods and Men, Sony Pictures Classics, starring Lambert Wilson, Michael Lonsdale, Olivier Rabourdin, Philippe Laudenbach, Jacques Herlin, Loïc Pichon and Xavier Maly. The film is helmed by Xavier Beauvois who wrote alongside Etienne Comar and is a multiple award winner and nominee in numerous film festivals. The historical drama was selected as a winner of the Best Foreign Language Film by the National Board of Review. Pic opens on February 25th, exclusive to New York and Los Angeles...
- 1/6/2011
- Upcoming-Movies.com
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