Claire Simon: «I talk about women’s bodies»

ANDsite while the phone by Claire Simon rings. Notre corps“a factory of humanity, where everyone goes with their truest feelings” he wrote Le Monde of his latest film, it’s about me too. She talks about many women I know and others I have never met. Talk about my mother.

In the end, I propose a very personal summary a Claire Simon, who spent seven weeks filming women’s bodies at the Tenon hospital in Paris in 2021 with a small all-female crew who pass between those rooms and corridors: «Notre corps it’s much more than a film, it’s a meeting” I tell her. Not a great revelation, every documentary is, at least between those who film and those on the other side of the lens. But here something different happens. The meeting is collective (“A crazy waltz of destinies” the director will conclude): the film weaves a very fine web between each of the patients at Tenon, a hospital which has the particularity of bringing together all the gynecology departments – fertility treatments, assisted fertilization, endometriosis treatment, pregnancy termination, maternity, gender transition, oncology.

Claire Simon, from observer to patient

And then, there is the director’s gaze. That at a certain point it changed, she had to do so, «to become subjective-objective» explains Simon who, during filming, clearly felt that something had changed in her body. Between the breast and the armpit there were three lumps. Thus, in the same place where she was telling the destinies of other women, the director received the diagnosis and included her own in the story. «I asked the director of photography Céline Bozon to film the doctor’s announcement (and at that moment the hand holding the camera gave way, ed).

And it was thanks to the meetings with the women of Tenon that, despite the harshness of that moment, I found the strength to react. If I hadn’t filmed the others, seen their lives with my own eyes, I would have been lost. And instead, at that point it became very clear: I was a woman among women. And I wasn’t alone.”

Notre corps at the Filmmaker festival in Milan

Claire Simon is fine, she had surgery, had chemo and finished her film. That the Filmmaker festival in Milan (filmmakerfest.com) will screen on November 26. From that chapter of the story he has preserved the doctor’s wise conclusion: «I’ll take care of your body, you take care of the film…». And the confirmation that the doctor had a tenacious spirit in front of him: “Luckily you’re on the left” Claire exclaimed. The arm with which she holds the camera is safe: “But I’m not stoic” she minimizes. “Alone, I’d rather make films than be sick».

Every film is a journey and Notre corps it begins with the journey that takes her from home to the hospital on the first day of filming…
Ironically, that path passes through the Père-Lachaise cemetery. If there’s one thing I think I understood while filming Notre corps, is the importance of the story, because cinema allows us to see others, and our similarities. Now I am fully aware, the film guides us along that one line that connects us all, from birth to death.

Notre corpsin fact, is the story of the stages of life through the female body, and it is a collective story, rare in times of blind individualism.
When my producer Kristina Larsen told me about the hospital where she had been treated for two years, I immediately thought it was a place worth exploring. Because there the women’s bodies are not “cut” into parts as expected by bourgeois morality. There is not an ugly part – those who don’t want children – and a good part – those who decide to have a child – or a miserable part – those who get sick -. There is the body and its mystery. And I wanted to show all bodies in their beauty, not just the ones we see in advertisements.

Claire Simon, the body and language

There is the body and there is language. The film shows conversations between patients and doctors of various kinds. Do you speak a different language when there is a woman on the healthcare system side?
Very different, but not many of us think so (laughs). When I had to be treated I explicitly asked for a female oncologist, because men always replied: «Vous verrez bien», “she will find out”. A phrase that drove me crazy. In my film, with few exceptions, women are superior to men, it’s a fact.

The department where gender transitions are followed at Tonon gives the impression of being a place of total openness. There is never a hint of judgment on the part of the health workers towards the people who made the decision.
It’s very true and it struck me a lot. I spoke to a surgeon who follows the transition from male to female, he told me that there really are people prisoners of a body that is not theirs: “We do what we can” he admitted. But they actually do a lot, and it’s all reimbursed by Social security! When I see things like this I think positive thoughts. And I have seen others that lead to optimism: all social classes are treated in the same way, people of different colors and backgrounds welcomed in the same way. The hospital is a perfect world, in its own way. And it is a scandal that public funding is being reduced.

It also seems like a reassuring world, which allows women to talk about desire, a true taboo…
I filmed a woman with an endometriosis problem who had been unable to have intercourse for years due to the pain. She despaired of it, but when the doctor proposed a cure that was perhaps decisive, but which would reduce her libido, she said: “I prefer to feel bad than lose desire.” Apart from the difficulty of the choice, a truly unconventional decision. But all the women I have filmed are extraordinary in their own way. Even the one who had cancer and smokes like a fireman: “It’s my only pleasure,” she says.

It is surprising that doctors and patients allowed her to avoid professional secrecy and enter such intimate areas, the delivery room, the consultation rooms. A patient from the operating table thanks her “for what she does”. But someone must have told her no.
Many said no, it’s part of the game. But many, when I explained what I intended to do, offered no resistance. And I didn’t sugarcoat anything. The only regret I have is that I couldn’t film the pain of birth. I spent days in the maternity ward waiting, but the women didn’t want me to film their pain, perhaps because it represents the highest degree of intimacy. However, it was often the husbands who said no, as if the woman’s body was their property. I usually reacted by telling them: “Look, I asked her, not you.” Finally, I was able to film a woman’s story of pain a few days after giving birth.

The story takes place while that woman is breastfeeding. The pain is now out of sight. A beautiful scene, like that of the mutual congratulations that the birthing mother and the midwife give each other when everything has gone well.
I also found the story of the PMA process very poetic (Procréation Médicalement Assistéeassisted procreation, ed), push the eye to observe the infinitely small in the microscope, in all its steps, from the meeting to the collection of the oocytes, to the collection of the sperm. And then the laboratory assistant’s excitement when he finds the egg while his colleague realizes that, for his part, there are very few sperm.

Then there is a delicate and very powerful moment at the same time. When a doctor is forced to offer palliative care to an elderly patient. There is no need for many words, just the gesture of those hands caressing each other.
The doctor is moved, it almost seems that the elderly woman makes a gesture towards her and wants to console her. It seemed to me to be a moment that was anything but sad, the body was there in its materiality and fragility, in its singularity that escapes norms and canons, even in that moment in its absolute beauty.

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