By Yun-hua Chen.
A natural continuation of Simon’s perpetual quest to intimately connect with humans in various conditions and manifestations.”
From life’s inception to its inevitable conclusion, from the intricate tissues within us to the complexities of our identities, Claire Simon’s Our Body looks into the gynecological experience with remarkable sensitivity and an unyielding pursuit of honesty.
Having received the Best Documentary award for The Graduation (Le Concours, 2018) at the Venice International Film Festival, Claire Simon is renowned for her empathy towards those she portrays on screen. She observes people and woods amidst the trees of Bois de Vincennes in The Woods Dreams are Made of (Le bois don’t les rêves son faits, 2015), engages with teenagers in Parisian suburbs in Young Solitude (Premières Solitudes, 2018), and documents the youngsters’ preparation for the annual entrance exam for La Fémis in The Graduation (2016). In 1997, she made a fiction film, A Foreign Body (Sinon, Oui), probing into the tangled relationship between women’s psyche and their bodies and almost prophesying Our Body. Our Body, Claire Simon’s latest documentary, premiered at the Berlinale Forum in 2023 and travelling to Visions du Réel afterwards, feels like a natural continuation of her perpetual quest to intimately connect with humans in various conditions and manifestations.
Claire Simon herself cited Denis Gheerbrandt’s Life is Boundless and Full of Dangers (1994), Frederick Wiseman’s Hospital (1970) and Near Death (1989), and Johan van der Keuken’s The Long Holiday (2000) as her sources of inspiration for Our Body. Meanwhile, the film can also be viewed in conjunction with Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel’s The Fabric of the Human Body (De Humani Coporis Fabrica, 2022), a French-Swiss documentary that lays bare the flesh and blood, tissues and veins underneath the skin during surgeries and autopsies in Parisian hospitals, as well as Léa Fehner’s Midwives (Sages-Femmes, 2023), a French fiction film that dramatizes the daily challenges faced by the medical staff within a fractured healthcare system. In this cinematic landscape, Our Body stands out by immersing itself in the lives of patients, both beneath and above the surface of their skin.
Set within a Parisian public gynecological hospital in the 20th arrondissement of Paris, Claire Simon and her all-female crew accompany a diverse range of patients in consultation rooms and operation theaters. Some seek assistance related to reproduction, conception, childbirth, or abortion, while others navigate gender transition or undergo cancer treatments. These conversations between patients and doctors captured by the camera delve into the most intimate moments of human existence, grappling with existentialist questions and exploring the raw and visceral realities of the clinic; life takes form, embryos are lost, mastectomies are performed, and individuals transition from one gender to another gender.
Simon transforms from a silent observer into an active participant within the hospital world. She becomes a snippet of the documentary’s narrative and bares her nakedness just like other patients that she films.”
Within this immersive experience, Our Body goes deeper into the human aspect of these conversations, shedding light on fundamental questions that define our humanity: our origins, the desire to extend life through the next generation, the struggles with the alignment between our body’s assigned sex and our identity, and the complexity of our existence as sexual beings. Through rapproachement with bodies, human emotions – fears, anxiety, pain, sorrow, and loneliness, are depicted in a raw and unflinching manner.
Filming at that particular hospital was initially the idea of the producer Kristina Larsen, as Simon said in her introductory prologue while walking from her home, passing through a cemetery, to the hospital; she wondered if she would catch cancer over there. In a pivotal moment, the director, her presence having faded into the off-screen realm after the prologue, has to turn the camera towards herself after discovering a lump under her arm and receiving a breast cancer diagnosis. A powerful interchange occurs between behind and in front of the lens, all the while her vulnerability at the moment of the diagnosis was captured by her photographer, Céline Bozon. Entering the screen space again in the second half of the film, Simon transforms from a silent observer into an active participant within the hospital world. She becomes a snippet of the documentary’s narrative and bares her nakedness just like other patients that she films.
Within the confined spaces of the hospital, the camera and the small crew of Simon’s remains in close proximity of staff members and patients, embracing affinity and offering unfiltered visuals. At a light-hearted moment of micro-narrative, the film zooms in through a microscope to look at the intricacies of medically assisted procreation (MAP). We witness the injection of a spermatozoid into an ooctyte by a lab technician in training – an astonishing testament to the magic of life, as the smallest of actions propel swimming sperm to create existence. Later on towards the end of the film, the camera finally ventures outside to add a macro-narrative of the prescribed structure of power imbalance between medical staff and patients; demonstrators at the hospital gates gather to share instances of professional misconduct and demand more transparency and safety for patients. Almost like living dozens of lifetimes through the experience of dozens of lives, Our Body is a poignant reminder of our bodies being the only physical carrier of life.
Yun-hua Chen is an independent film scholar. Her work has been published in Film International, Journal of Chinese Cinema, and Directory of World Cinema. Her monograph on mosaic space and mosaic auteurs was published by Neofelis Verlag, and she has contributed to the edited volume Greek Film Noir (Edinburgh University Press, 2022).