In front of the court, we shout “the death penalty” as the defense lawyer passes by. The case shocked France, and the trial unleashed passions. Why ? How can we ? In 2013, Fabienne Kabou, a Senegalese living in the Paris region, abandoned her 15-month-old daughter at the rising tide on the beach of Berck-sur-Mer, in the north of France. The child, Adélaïde, will be found drowned the next morning by annihilated fishermen. The investigation goes back to the mother of the victim, who will quickly admit her crime. However, during the trial, Fabienne Kabou will affirm that she did not want to kill her child. She was forced into it by witchcraft.
As for the facts, the director has remained faithful to them to the extreme. It must be said that, in this case, no need to add more, the reality went further than a fiction. These horrific facts are, however, secondary. Saint-Omerwhatever judicial drama it may be, does not question the crime itself, but the figure represented by its author: the mother.
In front of the lens of documentary filmmaker Alice Diop, who signs with Holy Omer her first fiction, Fabienne Kabou takes the name of Laurence Coly, and little Adélaïde becomes Lily. With the complicity of the writer crowned with a Goncourt, Marie Ndiaye, Diop explores the darkness of a tortured maternal instinct by adding to the story the character of Rama, author and university professor who came to follow the trial for his new book. Also of African origin, she has a common culture with that of Laurence Coly and makes the link between the spectator and the infanticidal mother. An absolutely necessary procrastination to make us a little more accessible to the spiral of torments that led the Senegalese to kill the flesh of her flesh.
The writing is masterful. The character of Coly, by his costume, blends halfway into the decor to become a voice, a testimony, which surpasses the human condition of the one who restores it. The staging is very theatrical. The accused, unlike that of the real trial, is not in a glass box, but open and raised like a stage. The tragic actress is cornered in front of her audience. The actress Guslagie Malanda, interpreter of the criminal, almost declaims her text and brings out the tragic poetry. Diop gives free rein to the play of the one she films in long shots, which she hardly cuts apart except to show us the reactions of the other characters and the less and less sustainable impact of this story which is beyond our understanding.
Room for introspection
Over the days of this trial filmed in real time, the camera gets closer to Coly while the questions asked become more and more intimate. The filmmaker emphasizes emotion and films portraits of women during the auditions. As stated above, the legal aspect is relegated to the background. Thanks to the parallel drawn between Rama and Laurence Coly, it serves above all as a pretext for introspection and to desacralize the image of the mother, which we would like to be perfect. Diop and Ndiaye invite us to ask ourselves if we might not all be capable of the worst.
It is with the plea, the film’s bravery, that the moral slap is dealt to us: “We are all monsters somewhere. But terribly human monsters. Diop pulls off a masterstroke by having the character of the defense lawyer speak directly to the camera. Here is now the sworn spectator of this story and unable to remain neutral. Brilliantly simple, the scheme hits the mark.
It remains to be seen whether he will make his way to Los Angeles. After winning the Silver Lion in Venice in 2022, Saint-Omer was selected by France to represent it at the Oscars in the “best foreign film” category. The members of the Academy Awards will retain it or not for the final selection. Verdict on January 24.