Our Body (2023)
- Reviewed from the 2023 Berlin International Film Festival
Claire Simon’s Our Body, an observational documentary set in a gynaecology clinic in Paris, begins with the filmmaker walking through a cemetery. Opening a film about healthcare in this way seems like a grave foreshadowing of what’s to come. But Simon isn’t interested in linear narratives of life in this hospital environment. With this sepulchral starting point, death is neutralised – the film gets the inevitability of it out of the way so it can focus instead on how uncertain health can be; on diagnoses and pain; and on the complexities of finding solutions.
Births and deaths do occur in Simon’s film, between abortions, IVF attempts, endometriosis excision surgery, transgender hormone therapy consultations, and mastectomies. The director is present with her camera for patient appointments and in the operating room; she comes across as curious rather than intrusive, empathetic rather than patronising. Occasionally, her voice can be heard from behind the camera offering words of encouragement to patients or applauding their bravery. For the most part, she just watches, Frederick Wiseman-esque, in pure observation mode.
The film is an exercise in duration, with a runtime of just under three hours and an extensive cast of patients and doctors. Simon doesn’t choose a handful of people to follow throughout the film – patients are shown once during their time in the clinic for whatever they’re being treated for that day – and refutes any kind of narrative progression in the film or in the patients’ lives. When a pregnant woman with cancer comes in for her chemotherapy treatment, it is tempting to hope that by the end of the film her story might be returned to, some progress update provided, for a sense of closure. But Simon forgoes a ‘24 Hours in A&E’-style instinct for character and plot in favour of a more collective vision. The problems and treatments across the Paris clinic may be varied but they are also shared, and the filmmaker’s approach, evident in the film’s title, encourages a universal way of thinking about healthcare that doesn’t centre any one experience.
Considering the focus on gynaecology here, it is a monumental work. Women’s medical experiences are too often negative and harmful, with many doctors unwilling to take symptoms seriously or problems so under-researched there are few viable cures. At one point in the film, a patient says of her pain: “as a woman, I thought I was just supposed to suffer.” This notion – the societal shrugging off of ‘women’s problems’ as either myths or unchangeable facts of life – is at the heart of Simon’s film. Notre Corps 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.’ Speaking as someone with endometriosis, a disease still so rarely spoken about let alone diagnosed, to hear the stories of others be platformed in this way is undeniably moving and fortifying. Similarly, to witness one woman giving birth or another discussing her impending menopause is an intimate and cherished privilege.
There is, of course, something idealised about the portrait Simon crafts of the clinic, where, for the most part, people receive the treatment they want and need. It lacks a stronger acknowledgement of the healthcare scenarios where this often isn’t the case, particularly for minority groups like Black women, disproportionately at risk of death in childbirth due to medical racism, or trans women who can face great prejudice in these spaces. But perhaps Simon chooses to present positive circumstances, which she does beautifully, to illustrate what these systems should be like all the time. Part of the film’s profound joy comes from the moments where problems have easy answers – a trans man has his periods stopped, a young woman proudly swallows her abortion pill – but there is clear devastation, too, when resolutions can’t be found. Simon’s plainly observational style leaves room for interpretation, particularly of the doctors’ approaches. The difference in practitioners’ tone of voice, for example, can be stark; the arrogance of one male surgeon is notable. Also frustrating is the repeated suggestion by doctors that some patients should freeze their eggs, as if everyone who can bear children unquestionably desires it.
Late in the film, Simon herself becomes a patient. In stepping in front of the camera and sharing her own traumatic diagnosis of breast cancer, the filmmaker becomes part of the collective body of the film and dissolves any sense of documentarian distance. The film’s radical empathy is cemented through Simon’s participation as well as her observation, and is equally enabled by the profound openness of everyone involved. Our Body is a devoted testament to these people and their pain, and is a remarkable piece of cinema.