![]() ![]() Which transitions nicely to what works so beautifully about “Hawa,” Maïmouna Doucouré’s follow-up to her Sundance hit “ Cuties.” As in her debut feature, Doucouré’s film follows a young first-generation girl as she navigates modern France. Yet despite everything she shares about herself, to those working in the court system and in the university system, she is always just “African.” This is where Rama and Laurence truly meet, in knowing that these people will never truly understand what it’s like to be them. Diop allows that ambiguity to remain, a specter hovering over the proceedings. Laurence tells her story in intricate detail, down to smallest bits about her life in Senegal, her immigration story, even her inner emotions, yet she herself is never sure why she did what she did. It’s here where Diop’s years of work focused on exploring the immigrant communities on the fringes of French society comes into sharp focus. When the details of Laurence’s abject isolation are revealed, Diop lets the white characters stew in their own bias they see malicious intent in Laurence’s hidden life, rather than the systematic neglect at its core. Here Rama finds a modicum of peace, knowing that, unlike Laurence, she has a support system on which she can lean. While listening to Laurence’s story, Rama’s anxieties about her impending motherhood and memories of her tempestuous relationship with her own mother occupy her mind. Originally intending to use the trial for research as she works on a modern retelling of Medea, Rama slowly finds repressed emotions bubbling to the surface. While Rama is shown as an accepted academic, Laurence is continually othered, with those observing the trial shocked at her “sophisticated” command of French (to which Rama tells her agent she just sounds like any other educated woman.)Īs the trial continues-shot with a beguiling patience by Claire Mathon-Rama’s steady façade begins to crumble. Both women occupy a liminal space between Senegal and France. Both women are academically inclined, with complicated relationships to their own mothers. Rama (Kayije Kagame), a novelist, feels drawn to the story of Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanda), a young woman on trial for the murder of her 15-month-old daughter. Characters smoke cigarettes.Documentarian Alice Diop’s narrative debut “ Saint Omer” is a visually arresting courtroom set drama that explores the similarities (and distinct differences) between two young women of Senegalese descent living in France. There is fleeting sight of blood on the clothes of a character. In scenes from a film, it is implied a woman murders her two sons. There are sex references, including a woman enquiring about a couple's lack of use of contraception. Discriminatory remarks are made, including a professor's assertion that a Senegalese woman should research something closer to her own culture rather than an Austrian philosopher. There are implied references to poor treatment a woman received from her mother as a child. Characters discuss a mutually abusive romantic relationship, in which a woman hid her pregnancy from her partner, whilst he tried to hide their relationship entirely from others. References are made to a character's poor mental health, and it is implied that as a result of this, the character experienced bouts of depression and nightmarish visions. theme There are upsetting scenes, including multiple instances in which characters discuss the murder of a fifteen month old child, who was drowned in the sea and whose body washed up on the sand. A woman is accused of lying to her partner, saying that she had an illness which prevented her from getting pregnant. sexual violence and sexual threat There is a brief, undetailed reference to female genital mutilation. ![]() Language There is infrequent use of strong language ('f**k'). ![]()
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