OUT OF COMPETITION Claire Simon sets her camera on a French gynecological clinic to make a film about what it is like to have a female body, the tribulations of consultations and the relationships between doctors and patients. Thus, we spend time in a world populated by hormone therapies and childbirth, endometriosis or cancer diagnoses, turning individual experiences into something that is felt communally, revealing a mosaic that contemplates the feminine universe.
An abortion, a fertility appointment, a gender transition consultation, a preparation for a mastectomy, an endometriosis excision surgery, a birth, – the icon of documentary filmmaking Claire Simon (Independent Hero of IndieLisboa 2014) is going from room to room in a gynaecological ward of a public hospital in Paris. A female body is constructed, reconstructed, and deconstructed in multiple ways, on the operation table and through the hormonal therapy in this encyclopaedic, corporeal and compassionate look at the backside of gendered society. The individual diagnoses and treatments are put together on the extended timeline that follows the life cycle from the conception under the microscope until the menopause and beyond. The film grows and mutates, as the observational camera becomes more and more personal, up until the point where the filmmaker appears before the lens herself. (Anastasia Lukovnikova)
