Film Forum

Cinema is no stranger to exposing women’s bodies. But rarely do we experience their corporeal reality, through sickness and health, aging and change. With access to the examination rooms of a gynecology clinic in Paris, Claire Simon trains her compassionate eye and ear to doctor-patient interactions, both intimate and epic: a young girl candidly divulges an unwanted pregnancy; a trans woman reveals the physiological and emotional challenges of transition; a couple shares their long struggle with infertility; a doctor holds a patient’s hand while breaking the news of terminal illness. Unexpectedly, the filmmaker herself becomes a patient, plunging this omnibus of emotionally engaging stories into even more personal depths. “Ebullient. A realistic celebration…[that] never shies away from the contradictions and complexities of what it means to be alive.” – Slant

Presented with support from the Richard Brick, Geri Ashur, and Sara Bershtel Fund for Social Justice Documentaries

2023     168 MIN.     FRANCE     IN FRENCH WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES     CINEMA GUILD

Reviews

“Critic’s Pick. PROFOUNDLY HUMANE.”
– Lisa Kennedy, The New York Times

“Explores the lives of patients and doctors in a women’s hospital in Paris…a work of vast emotional scope, and Simon… endows it with a grand conceptual framework to match, moving from conception and birth to old age and death, and from the observational to the confessional... Simon, who does her own cinematography, continually displays a tremulous attentiveness to the everyday dramas experienced by those who must entrust their bodies to the expertise of strangers… [she] films the lives of others with an empathetic passion that transforms observation into deep and resonant subjectivity.”
– Richard Brody, The New Yorker

“A monumental work. Does something that shouldn’t be revolutionary but fundamentally seems to be: it says to its patients, ‘Tell me of your pain and I will listen’... A devoted testament to these people and their pain, and a remarkable piece of cinema.”
– Caitlin Quinlan, Sight & Sound

“[Claire Simon] has amassed a body of work somewhat comparable to that of American master Frederick Wiseman. Luxuriant in length but never less than compelling. With typically compassionate and insightful results. Demystifying and de-objectifying the female body… Simon’s nonjudgmental, empathetic curiosity is the film’s great strength. It can be such a revelation, as women, to see OUR BODY, portrayed without sexualization and without stigmatization—without, in a word, shame.”
– Jessica Kiang, Variety

“Quietly spectacular. Delves into some of the most intimate, exposed moments of any woman’s life… an overwhelming yet extremely engaging film. A probing, profound look at women’s health concerns. A fascinating journey that’s both larger than life and deeply personal.”
– Jason Gorber, POV Magazine

“Wonderful and overwhelming. A tour de force. Intimately epic. Ebullient. Simon’s film submerges the viewer in what is at once a life-affirming elixir that reminds us that to be alive is a sublime luxury.”
– Diego Semerene, SLANT Magazine