Our Body (Claire Simon, 2023).
Few filmmakers capture the world with as passionate a sense of exploration and generosity as the French director Claire Simon. I first encountered Simon’s work at the True/False Film Festival, in 2015, where she was given a retrospective. In her documentary feature Mimi (2002), a middle-aged Franco-Jewish woman, Simon’s friend, tells the story of her parents and her own life, including crucial tales of amorous infatuation and enduring love. Love marked by the cruelties and devastation of war, such as the capturing of Mimi’s father by the Gestapo, because he was so hungry during the war that he slayed a donkey to eat its flesh; or another story, the most tragic one, of how a tiny piece of white bread—a luxury in wartime—for which Mimi’s father begged so ardently, led to his demise. Through her bodily gestures, her delicate features ignited with the bright flame of passionate recollection, Mimi enacts for us the scene of her parents’ marriage. It’s a story of two strangers passing each other in the street, and both surprisingly turning back, to hold another’s gaze.
Many Simon films later, I interpret the central scene as uncannily linked to the director’s craft, as both a documentary and fiction storyteller. The moment encapsulates a desire to see, see again, apprehend, and then, perhaps, to also see truly. It is also an instant of inexplicable felicity, and equally, expresses an underlying belief in fate, a faith that random events and moments can be made to speak of a meaningful whole. The magic that Simon conjures up, here and elsewhere, also arises from yet another important virtue she possesses as a filmmaker: patience, which in formal terms translates into a willingness to hold the shot. How often do we miss people’s emotional states or things around us, because we are too quick to move on, too certain of our initial evaluation, or too trustful in our innate ability to read the codes written on the body? Simon turns away from these very human impulses—and the viewers are all the better for it.
Perhaps this is why Simon can pull off a feat that most filmmakers, or viewers, might dismiss on paper as just too literal, or dull: In I Want to Talk About Duras (2021), her subject matter is, in fact, precisely that—a conversation between the young bisexual man who was Marguerite Duras’s lover for a brief period, and the journalist wishing to write a feature on Duras. I Want to Talk about Duras nests in that ill-defined filmic crevice we call “hybrid.” A fiction, on the surface, it might be more aptly called a docudrama, a term that suggests some permission to play with the factual, but, nevertheless, betrays a keen interest in the facts themselves. But Simon’s film is also very much about the body: how it speaks, gestures, what pace it might take when one talks of infatuation, what tensions it might transmit when the discussion at hand turns to real-life torments. Body as, at times stealthy, messenger, a manifestation slowly coaxed to appear. These emanations of the body are present in the film that, in many ways, distills Simon’s talents. Here, as in Mimi, the pacing of the story is also dictated by the dual agency: of memory and the body. The conjunction brings together disparate temporalities, the space of then/there, and of here/now.
Simon’s new documentary feature, Our Body (2023), is unlike the two films I’ve mentioned, in the sense that it is resolutely committed to recording the here and now. Simon documents a health clinic in Paris that services women throughout the entire reproductive and life cycle. But here too, as Simon again shows a remarkable sense of synchronicity with the women she films, there is a meaningful connection to the past, namely, the fact that Simon’s father spent many years ill and hospitalized. When watching the middle-aged Simon walking to the clinic past a cemetery, and reminiscing of her father, one senses the tinge of the past seeping into the present. But perhaps more than in any of her previous films, Our Body also feels very much like an embrace. The camera holds the shot, the filmmaker’s eye holds another’s body and their gaze. The women’s beauty, whether in joy or excruciating pain, is what drives each scene. Sometimes, it is hard to look, and yet we wish not, cannot, look away—or else, if squeamish, peek back.
I spoke with Claire Simon after her film’s premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival.
Our Body (Claire Simon, 2023).
NOTEBOOK: The remarkable thing about watching your film in Berlin was speaking about it with my male colleagues. One confessed to having cried through much of the film. Another was astounded at seeing what’s being asked of women’s bodies, and gasped, “It’s too much!”
CLAIRE SIMON: Good. Men don’t have this experience and rarely see it, so they have no idea.
NOTEBOOK: How did you come across the material?
SIMON: My producer asked me if I’d like to film the unit at a local hospital that women used all the way until their death—to show all the pleasures and the pathologies. The doctors there are very badly paid, but they won’t work anywhere else for anything in the world. My producer had a great woman surgeon and was very interested in showing the whole process: young women, women with cancer. Of course, I was interested. I felt that it was lacking in my other film, God’s Offices (2008). I now had a chance to tell all the stories of women’s bodies. That’s why I start at the beginning, as I go from my house and then walk past the cemetery, which is such a frightening thing to do, in a way. I wanted to show this topographic situation.
NOTEBOOK: Your own dad was in the hospital for decades.
SIMON: Yes, so I really know the experience. I was surprised by American viewers who thought that I showed the hospital too positively. In France, public hospitals are free. It’s no paradise, but doctors try to do their job. I was not interested, however, in doctors. I was interested in what women go through. It’s not that I hid things. I filmed a demonstration that showed conflict. I never thought, “Oh, I shouldn’t show that, because it’s negative.”
NOTEBOOK: I found it remarkable to see how often the doctors and the hospital workers say to the women, “It’s important that it is your story.” Their willingness to listen was somehow astounding, at least given my own medical experiences in the United States. What else personally surprised you during the shoot?
SIMON: The beauty. I knew that you have to film the body, always the body, because it is so hidden. The women in my film are not Beyoncé, but they’re beautiful. I try to film them with as much beauty as possible, because it’s our body, our bodies. I regret that I couldn’t film pain. There was a lot of pain in the maternity ward that the women didn’t want me to film. I came every day for two weeks to get some footage. I told the midwife, “I’ll give a completely wrong idea of maternity, because I’m showing births with the epidural, and they seem like no problem.” I asked every woman but none wanted to be on camera. I just show one woman, but she’s so remarkably good at enduring pain that she just goes into herself and you see nothing. When you go through so much pain perhaps you don’t want others to see it. You don’t feel you can reveal it. All the women who accepted to be in the film testify to their situation.
NOTEBOOK: A lot of films about illness are more about a condition rather than the body.
SIMON: In Wiseman’s Hospital, there’s an extraordinary scene when a guy throws up—and that’s the body. But his hospital looks like Dante’s circles [of hell], it is more about the institution. I didn’t want to make a film about a hospital at all. I wanted to make a film about women’s bodies. In the unit you have everything, maternity, cancer, all in the same facility.
Our Body (Claire Simon, 2023).
NOTEBOOK: You do, however, show surgeons talking amongst themselves.
SIMON: Because they must have a complete agreement. That’s why you have an oncologist, a radiologist, all the other disciplines, to decide if they do the surgery or not. This was on the first day I was filming and it was so beautiful. I thought, “This is not religion, it’s science. These guys save lives.” For me, it was like the NASA of the body.
NOTEBOOK: What kind of research and preparation did you do before filming?
SIMON: I’m like Frederick Wiseman, who’s now a good friend. We don’t scout, because [if you do] you end up seeing things that you’re not filming, and then when you shoot, it’s all bad. Documentary filmmaking is incredible because you go into it with bare hands. You have an idea and you must chase it. My idea was to film the women from their youth to the end of life—to have a big arc, and also to never show the same woman. It’s enough to make a film.
NOTEBOOK: You go in, see someone, approach them, turn on the camera—that’s it.
SIMON: I also have good friends. For example, the midwife is a wonderful friend, and so are some of the doctors and surgeons, so we talk to them first.
NOTEBOOK: You include trans people’s stories.
SIMON: I was so happy that they accepted to be filmed. There’s the young trans boy, who at first, upon learning that my film was called, Women’s Body, said he didn’t want to be in a film with that title. But then I said, “How about, Our Body?” and he agreed to participate.
NOTEBOOK: We see him discuss having a baby, since he has a womb, but no spermatozoa.
SIMON: It’s a big deception for him. You want your desire to be incarnated in your body.
NOTEBOOK: The scenes in the lab are so cinematic, with so much storytelling. There’s the whole drama with the microscope and with the hands manipulating the sperm.
SIMON: I spent two weeks in the lab, because I loved it so much. I thought it was like something from Lars von Trier. I loved the lab guy, he’s so funny and nice. [His process] is very technical, but in the end, it’s his human hands that are making the babies. Every morning he comes in and says, “I hope it’s working.” It’s so beautiful. It’s the beginning of life.
NOTEBOOK: You show other moments—for example, the technician’s hands.
SIMON: In the scene with the robot, yes. It’s incredible. The technicians see inside the body in 3D, but we don’t. For most of us, the picture of what’s inside our bodies is a mess—we don’t understand it. But you suffer less if you know what it is. That’s why it’s very important to see things. Each time a surgeon is in the block, she draws the body, and then says, “This is this. This is that.” It’s all about the relationship between words and the body. It’s very important that all your life you have this relationship—it’s the 18th-century idea that you must be able to draw and to know what the relationship between the word and the part of your body is.
NOTEBOOK: The camera further connects the word and the body?
SIMON: Of course. That’s why I always told myself, “Film the body, film the body, no matter what you think.” In consultations, I always filmed gestures, hands.
NOTEBOOK: What is it like to introduce the camera into the operating room?
SIMON: They didn’t want us touching anything. At the very beginning I didn’t know this, so during one operation they had to change everything I had touched, even though I was completely covered. I felt so terrible. It’s also interesting to see how a person disappears under anesthesia, and then later reemerges.
NOTEBOOK: The fact that you already knew some of the nurses seems important, because everyone shepherded the patients together. That’s why you could be so intimate. It’s like a community film—it could have not have been made without those around you.
SIMON: I was afraid at first to film the surgeries. For example, the C-section scene, with all the water gushing out. I thought that it was going to dirty my lens. And then I thought, “How can you even think such a thing? You’re about to go to war, my dear.” The woman who had two babies, it was so beautiful, because then you realize what amniotic liquid is really like. When the babies are born, you always think they’re dead, but they wake up, like small gods.
NOTEBOOK: Some viewers seemed shocked by the physicality of the C-section.
SIMON: I didn’t show as much of it as I’d like. When you open the abdominal muscle, it’s much worse in reality. Viewers love terrible crimes in the movies—when you poke out an eye, cut a throat, but a small thing like a C-section—which, you know, one out of five people is born by C-section, it’s very common—but then to show it, and to show that it’s even more difficult than a normal birth… Because everyone thinks that you just open the body and take the baby out, and that it’s so easy, nut no, my god, you have all the muscles, you cut the uterus…
NOTEBOOK: Did you know the extent of all this beforehand?
SIMON: No. I knew some of it, because one of my students had made a film about midwives, but I was surprised—because there are two babies and in the end it’s so hard, like opening the doors at the Berlinale [Palast auditorium]!
NOTEBOOK: Did you fear your audience would not be able to endure it?
SIMON: I don’t want people to not to see the film because of a C-section. They can endure so much crime in fiction but not a beautiful story. You know, Julius Caesar was born like this, and Macbeth. But old men, in particular, are afraid to see women’s bodies.
NOTEBOOK: In cinema—and in life.
SIMON: It’s like Satan. “Go away! We love beautiful Marilyn Monroe. But reality, no.”
NOTEBOOK: Did you always know that you’ll open your film with you walking?
SIMON: No, it’s something about being subjective / objective. The film suddenly became my story, so I thought that I had to cross the cemetery—and it’s no small thing to cross it before going to the hospital, but I had to reveal how this film came out of an encounter with my producer. I first filmed other women objectively, as sisters, and then, at one point, I became ill, so it became subjective.
Our Body (Claire Simon, 2023).
NOTEBOOK: Once you got your own diagnosis, did you know immediately that you would also show your own body naked on camera?
SIMON: Yes, because it’s a question of equality. Some people are completely wrong about documentary filmmaking. Making documentaries is a very difficult art. Even before I knew that I was sick, I wanted to film a diagnosis, but [the breast cancer surgeon] said that it was impossible. A surgeon can’t go in the waiting room to tell a woman, “Look, I’ve got a camera in my office,” while knowing that she’s going to deliver terrible news to the patient. And then it happened to me that I was going to be the patient to receive the diagnosis. I asked Céline Bozon, who was my cinematographer for I Want to Talk About Duras, to film me.
NOTEBOOK: Was this the only time that she did that in the film?
SIMON: The second time was the operation. My surgeon is great. She answers all your questions directly. I trusted these two women so much—that’s why I am naked. I thought, “Yeah, I am naked like all the other patients, why not? I’m not above them.”
NOTEBOOK: So the crew consists of you, your assistant, sound person, and Bozon.
SIMON: Yes. Céline is a very good framer. She was so moved that I asked her to do it. There is the last film, The Long Holiday (2000), by a filmmaker I admire, Johan van der Keuken, but I thought that the scene where he sees his doctor [to learn that he has prostate cancer] was not good, because there was nobody behind the camera. Céline did a beautiful job.
NOTEBOOK: What makes a good framer?
SIMON: They listen. The most important thing for framing is to listen. I shoot with the headphones, because you construct a relationship between image and sound. Besides that, they’re artistic framers who make beautiful compositions. Documentary filmmaking is beautiful because it’s true. You get so overwhelmed that you don’t see how it’s framed and cut—the story, and all that. I find truth so beautiful. That’s what we pay for, this beauty of the truth. Which doesn’t mean that there is no mise-en-scène. For example, I didn’t film the doctors or the hospital by choice. The ideal of critiquing documentary filmmaking would be [to show] how I am in the middle of the people and film the body even when they talk. Hardly anyone talks about that. Critics should explain how you can analyze a film. For example, the beautiful Frederick Wiseman is a good critic of Frederick Wiseman. I understand what he does. His editing is beautiful, though it’s very different from mine, because he’s not framing, he is doing sound. Documentary filmmaking is not reality. It’s artistic work and it’s amazing, but you have to explain it. Very few people are able to truly explain the art of documentary.