Notre Corps – first-look review | Little White Lies

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Notre Corps – first-look review

24 Feb 2023

Words by Carly Mattox

Sleeping newborn baby wrapped in a blanket, nestled in an adult's arms.
Sleeping newborn baby wrapped in a blanket, nestled in an adult's arms.
Set with­in a Parisian gyne­co­log­i­cal clin­ic, Claire Simon’s pow­er­ful doc­u­men­tary focus­es on the myr­i­ad sto­ries of patients who seek advice and care.

Notre Corps begins in the trem­bling grasp of its direc­tor, as Claire Simon’s hand­held cam­era shows her own route by foot to the front doors of a pub­lic gyne­co­log­i­cal clin­ic in Paris’s 20th arrondisse­ment. It is a sun­ny day, and gold­en light is cast onto the side­walk. As she explains in the open­ing nar­ra­tion, the project came to her at the behest of pro­duc­er Kristi­na Larsen, who her­self had spent time at the cen­ter as a patient. For much of the film’s near-three hour run­time, Simon keeps her­self off-screen, a word­less observ­er cap­tur­ing the emo­tion­al­ly fraught con­ver­sa­tions which occur between patients and doc­tors behind quite lit­er­al closed doors.

A fif­teen-year-old, with a hood­ie pulled over her head to obscure her iden­ti­ty, reveals that she is preg­nant, her voice betray­ing both anx­i­ety and shame. A sev­en­teen-year-old tran­si­tion­ing from female to male, accom­pa­nied by a sup­port­ive moth­er, is told that he can­not start his tran­si­tion in earnest until he turns eigh­teen, as his father does not approve.

Mul­ti­ple births hap­pen on-screen; dur­ing one, a woman scrolls on her phone with non­cha­lance as she explains that her hus­band is at home watch­ing their oth­er chil­dren. She deliv­ers her baby, a girl, in a room with only a doc­tor and the per­son behind the cam­era. Using Google trans­late, a woman who only speaks Span­ish asks if, fol­low­ing treat­ment, she will be able to have chil­dren. Using the same trans­la­tor app, the doc­tor explains that, no, she prob­a­bly won’t.

An unseen woman is told that she has breast can­cer. She imme­di­ate­ly asks about whether she will need a mas­tec­to­my; how soon after she can sched­ule a recon­struc­tive surgery; whether she will lose her hair; her head bows, betray­ing a wave of emo­tion. You wor­ry about the film,” the doc­tor tells her, and we’ll wor­ry about this.”

At once we under­stand that this is Simon her­self — of course it is, her voice is the same as the film’s begin­ning nar­ra­tor — and the entire film shifts. At once, the cam­era and the woman behind it are no longer silent, Wise­man-esque wit­ness­es, but instead guardian angels keep­ing a watch­ful eye as patients expe­ri­ence, in turn, the worst and the best days of their lives.

The run­time might be daunt­ing, but it is easy to imag­ine Simon and her edi­tor, Luc For­veille, sit­ting togeth­er, unable to bring them­selves to cut a sin­gle sto­ry from the film, which has been orga­nized not chrono­log­i­cal­ly but by the age of the patient, from the youngest to the old­est. This care­ful­ly con­struct­ed mosa­ic lays bare a por­trait of empa­thy, and per­haps with­out orig­i­nal­ly intend­ing to, feels pro­found­ly political.

Each day, bod­ies are being policed with increas­ing fre­quen­cy; access to abor­tion has been restrict­ed in the Unit­ed States, and gen­der-affirm­ing care for teens and adults alike is still under attack in both the USA and the UK. Claire Simon has titled her film Notre Corps — Our Body – a remark­able act of sol­i­dar­i­ty, which offers a vision of opti­mism often only doc­u­men­tary film is capa­ble of.

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