"Saint Omer" is a powerful and thought-provoking film directed by accomplished documentary filmmaker Alice Diop. The film is based on the true story of Fabienne Kabou, a French-Senegalese woman accused of killing her infant daughter and leaving her to drown on a beach. Diop has created a film that leaves the audience with more questions than answers, but it is this approach that allows the film to resonate with anxieties and the undertow of subterranean influence. The film stars Kayije Kagame as Rama, a novelist and professor who is drawn to attend the trial, and Guslagie Malanga as Laurence, the accused woman in the dock. The film's cinematography by Claire Mathon is stunning, and the performances by the lead actors are outstanding. "Saint Omer" is a film that will stay with you long after you've left the theater.

Alice Diop and her cast are truly amazing... In previous work (Vers la tendresse),she managed to capture some of the emotional struggles of young French men with a migratory background and living in economically deprived Parisian suburbs. In Saint Omer, she focuses on the emotional struggles of women from a similar background. This is the story of two daughters, Rama and Laurence. Rama is a symbol of the French meritocratic system. From a modest background and of African descent, she is a university professor and a successful novelist. We understand that her mother, probably a cleaning lady, used to leave home very early to go to work. Laurence, a former student in philosophy, passionate about Wittgenstein, "never wanted for anything". With the financial support of her parents, she emigrated from Senegal as a young adult to study in France. Laurence is being tried for killing her 15-month-old daughter and Rama is attending her trial. As she listens to Laurence, her chldhood, her relationship with her parents, and in particular her mom, Rama is brought to reflect and feel about her relationship with her own mother. Laurence and Rama are two highly assimilated women, materially standing on the sore shoulders of their respective mothers, and who have achieved a level of social success that is often denied to men from similar communities. And yet, deep down, both of them suffer from the (perceived?) lack of warmth and love of their mothers, with terrible consequences for Laurence and her relationship with her own daughter.

This is a story about parental love, and in particular between emotionally struggling mothers and their unseen daughters. It's not specific to any community or economic background. What, to me, makes it a true masterpiece, is the compassion we are left feeling for all these women.

Two of the previous four reviewers loved this movie. Two really disliked it.

I guess I'm somewhere in the middle.

The story it tells about the Senegalese immigrant who kills her child is a sad one, certainly. In the end, after we hear all the evidence, it is hard not to agree with her defender, who concluded that she suffered from some sort of mental disorder.

What is less clear is the effect her testimony has not only on Rama, the novelist who attended the trial, but also on the female judge and that lawyer. Rama tells her lover that she is afraid of being a bad mother to their still unborn child because she sees her relationship with her own mother as bad. But why is she worried about that? I was surprised that she never talks about how she might base a novel on the mother's infanticide, which was the original reason she went to the trial to observe. Or does she at the end abandon that idea. If so, why?

I found the acting to be very good. The movie moves very slowly, certainly, but that didn't bother me.

I could never recommend this movie to any woman with children. I don't know how many men would want to sit through all of it. So I can't actually recommend it here, unless perhaps you know the director's or the actors' previous work and want to see their latest endeavor.