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The central aspect of French filmmaker Alice Diop's fiction-feature debut, Saint Omer, is an unfathomable crime: A mother left her 15-month-old daughter on a beach to be swept out to sea, resulting in her death. It is inspired by a real case that made headlines in France and abroad, the trial for which the director actually attended. While the film is interested in the woman who committed the act, it primarily follows a character in Diop's observer position, and its driving question is not, as it might've been in other projects, "How does one make any sense of senseless tragedy?" Instead, Saint Omer asks, "What if an unfathomable crime isn't so unfathomable after all?" It is a heavy line of thinking that leads to no easy answers, but which Diop follows anyway, with enveloping, patient intent. Viewers willing to give it the same, almost spellbound focus the protagonist gives...