On March 2, 2023, Francey Russell, assistant professor of philosophy, published a film review in the Los Angeles Review of Books, titled “Identifications and Their Refusal: On Alice Diop’s ‘Saint Omer.’” In this glowing review, Russell gives a thorough, attentive analysis of Saint Omer, the first narrative film by French documentarian Alice Diop.
Based on the real-life trial of Fabienne Kabou, which was attended by Diop in 2016, Saint Omer follows the fictional trial of Laurence Coly, a Senegalese woman accused of murdering her infant child in France. Rama, a young professor attending the trial with the hope of writing a book on the topic, finds Laurence’s story resonates with her in unexpected ways. Tracking the trajectory of the film from beginning to end, Russell calls the film “gorgeous and gutting.” She highlights Diop’s skillful transformation of the film’s courtroom into a place of theatre and pushes back against one reviewer’s suggestion that Rama was not a necessary character. Russell commends Diop’s development of “her own filmic language.”