Post by Dracula on Feb 19, 2023 14:06:59 GMT -5
Saint Omer(1/14/2023)
Saint Omer is the first scripted film from the French documentarian Alice Diop, though it’s a scripted feature that has a heavy dose of docudrama so I wouldn’t say it’s a complete 180 for the filmmaker. In fact the film’s point of view character is a clear self-insert as the whole film is based around a semi-high profile French trial that the filmmaker traveled to the titular city in order to witness for inspiration into a new project. The version of that case seen here is fictionalized. The names have been changed and the Diop surrogate is made to be an academic rather than a filmmaker, but this fictionalization is thin as by all accounts large portions of the court room scenes are taken verbatim from court transcripts. Oddly enough I’m not sure that the case at the center of all this seems all that novel to me. It’s about a Senegalese immigrant who is accused of having murdered a baby she gave birth to secretly and was fathered by a married man thirty years her elder who seems to have somewhat abandoned both of them. The trial scenes themselves sort of threw me for a loop as the French justice system seems to work rather differently from the American courtroom scenes I’m used to, in which defendants would not be compelled to testify to the same extent and it’s also frankly not that clear to me what the defense strategy here is. They ultimately appear to be going for a “not guilty by reason of metal impairment” but we don’t really see psychologist testimony and much of the questioning doesn’t seem to be directed towards this.
However, the movie isn’t really about courtroom strategy and in many ways it downplays questions of guilt and innocence and is instead framed to be more about the way that Diop’s surrogate protagonist reacts to the trial she’s watching. The film incorporates a rather unique editing style that seems to place special emphasis on reaction shots and we’re to intuit that the point of view character finds what she’s watching rather affecting, possibly because she sees so much of herself in this defendant. Like the defendant she’s the daughter of Sengalese immigrants and she’s pregnant at the time of witnessing this, so she may also be sharing a similar anxiety towards motherhood. Additionally we’re given some hints that the point of view character has a complicated relationship with her mother that seems similar to issues the defendant has, but I might have liked a bit more detail on both sides of that. It reminded me a bit of Aftersun, another import that seems rooted in familial baggage, albeit coming from the other side of things temporally. I didn’t really connect with that movie as strongly as some people have and I similarly am not sure I entirely connected with this one either, though I definitely respect what both movies are doing intellectually.
***1/2 out of Five
Saint Omer is the first scripted film from the French documentarian Alice Diop, though it’s a scripted feature that has a heavy dose of docudrama so I wouldn’t say it’s a complete 180 for the filmmaker. In fact the film’s point of view character is a clear self-insert as the whole film is based around a semi-high profile French trial that the filmmaker traveled to the titular city in order to witness for inspiration into a new project. The version of that case seen here is fictionalized. The names have been changed and the Diop surrogate is made to be an academic rather than a filmmaker, but this fictionalization is thin as by all accounts large portions of the court room scenes are taken verbatim from court transcripts. Oddly enough I’m not sure that the case at the center of all this seems all that novel to me. It’s about a Senegalese immigrant who is accused of having murdered a baby she gave birth to secretly and was fathered by a married man thirty years her elder who seems to have somewhat abandoned both of them. The trial scenes themselves sort of threw me for a loop as the French justice system seems to work rather differently from the American courtroom scenes I’m used to, in which defendants would not be compelled to testify to the same extent and it’s also frankly not that clear to me what the defense strategy here is. They ultimately appear to be going for a “not guilty by reason of metal impairment” but we don’t really see psychologist testimony and much of the questioning doesn’t seem to be directed towards this.
However, the movie isn’t really about courtroom strategy and in many ways it downplays questions of guilt and innocence and is instead framed to be more about the way that Diop’s surrogate protagonist reacts to the trial she’s watching. The film incorporates a rather unique editing style that seems to place special emphasis on reaction shots and we’re to intuit that the point of view character finds what she’s watching rather affecting, possibly because she sees so much of herself in this defendant. Like the defendant she’s the daughter of Sengalese immigrants and she’s pregnant at the time of witnessing this, so she may also be sharing a similar anxiety towards motherhood. Additionally we’re given some hints that the point of view character has a complicated relationship with her mother that seems similar to issues the defendant has, but I might have liked a bit more detail on both sides of that. It reminded me a bit of Aftersun, another import that seems rooted in familial baggage, albeit coming from the other side of things temporally. I didn’t really connect with that movie as strongly as some people have and I similarly am not sure I entirely connected with this one either, though I definitely respect what both movies are doing intellectually.
***1/2 out of Five
