![]() ![]() “If I’m lying, I can’t know why,” she says, to the frustration of the prosecuting counsel (Robert Cantarella). She also describes herself as a “Cartesian.” (Warning: do not use that line, in self-defense, anywhere other than France.) Some of her statements, when she is caught out in prevarication, have the air of logical riddles. The mystery grows Laurence, we learn, told the police that she was the victim of sorcery, cursed by the “evil eye” and hallucinations. Calm of demeanor, she admits to having caused the death of her daughter, Élise, but finds it hard to explain how she could have done such a thing, saying, “I hope this trial will give me the answer”-words not often heard in the mouth of an accused person. The defendant in the film is Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanda), who, like her real-life counterpart, hails from Senegal and is highly educated. The presiding judge (Valérie Dréville) is, quite rightly, the glarer-in-chief. Much of the movie is set in a courtroom, and includes not just lengthy scenes of cross-examination but also, more discomforting still, moments of suspended animation, as it were, during which one character stares or glares at another. Hitherto, Diop’s work has been in documentary now we have her first feature, “Saint Omer,” which is clearly and closely inspired by the case of Kabou, and which retains the attentiveness-the patient ardor-of a good documentary. One of those who attended the subsequent trial, in the town of Saint-Omer, was the filmmaker Alice Diop. She had moved in with a much older man he was the father of the girl who died. Born and raised in Dakar, Kabou was academically bright, and had come from Senegal to France, where she pursued her studies. Not long afterward, police arrested the child’s mother, Fabienne Kabou, who was charged with murder. In November, 2013, a baby girl was found drowned on the beach at Berck-sur-Mer, in northwest France. ![]()
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