![]() While everyone else seemed to be talking around Laurence, even discussing her state of mind and history as if she was not right there with them, it was Rama who truly sought to see her. When paired with an initially subtle yet increasingly overwhelming score by Thibault Deboaisne, it is completely shattering. In the entire film, it is the only time the two actually make eye contact. At one key moment, the discussions of the proceedings all fade into the background as she just looks at the resolute Laurence who turns to her and briefly smiles in recognition. Though she doesn’t speak much, Rama is no less of an important presence and the film says so much just with what she pays attention to. This makes sense considering that it was based on a real trial that Diop was personally drawn to and attended. Instead, we see it focus almost entirely on Laurence through the eyes of Rama. This itself is a rarity that flies in the face of how these things normally go where an intrepid lawyer is given the spotlight. While the story is fundamentally about the way dehumanization is baked into the foundations of such a process, the film is a quiet yet deeply compassionate one. This is seen when, in a fleeting moment where the legal and existential weight on her shoulders proves to be too much following testimony by a supposed expert who makes a slew of racist remarks, she sits down before being instructed that she must remain standing. It reveals the complete and utter lack of compassion for Laurence in every phrase of the process. As every aspect of her character’s life is put under a microscope to poke and prod at, the manner in which she brings every line to life makes for a multilayered, uncompromising experience. ![]() In this, she relies on Malanda to give an understated yet unflinching performance. Instead, Diop draws us deeper into the world almost entirely via dialogue. Often feeling more like a play, outside the beginning premonition, there are no flashbacks to what happened. It is a mesmerizing legal drama where the pretense and spectacle we have grown accustomed to seeing in other such depictions of the process have been stripped away. What follows is a series of scenes that are defined by unbroken monologues that are simple yet absolutely devastating to just sit and watch. At the very beginning of the proceedings, we are given the "truth." We learn that Laurence left her child to die, something she admits to, but we then see how this death came by a thousand cuts over multiple years that grew to be too much. However, there are many reservations and wrinkles that the film then spends its time delicately untangling. ![]() Rama is there solely to watch for the purposes of a book she intends to write. ![]() She then packs a bag and gets on a bus to go spend what feels like several days observing the trial of a Senegalese woman named Laurence Coly ( Guslagie Malanda), who is being put on trial in Saint-Omer, France. This becomes a recurring element in the story, as she is reticent to share herself and her life with her family. She is clearly frightened by it, though she attempts to push past it in order to continue on with her day. It all begins and ends with the story of Rama ( Kayije Kagame) who awakens one morning after what seems to be a nightmare that carries a personal significance though may also be the painful memory of another. ![]()
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