Sadly, it is noteworthy when a film stars two actresses over the age of 60. But more diverse casting doesn’t always translate into good cinema. Writer/director Martin Provost is known for his biopics Séraphine and Violet, so his original screenplay for The Midwife is a slight change of pace, yet still manages to keep his focus on the lives of enigmatic women. Whereas those films highlighted individuals, The Midwife‘s greatest asset is the interplay between headstrong midwife Claire (Catherine Frot) and the force-of-nature Béatrice (Catherine Deneuve). The film may struggle with pacing and overall plot, but the presence of a French icon and her fraught chemistry with Frot make up for its faults.
Claire herself is an intriguing blend of maternal sweetness and stubborn hardlining. Scenes of her deftly delivering newborns pepper the film, and Provost even chooses to make this our first impression of the character. Her selfless work life somewhat carries through into her anti-social personal life, with Claire’s only hobby being gardening in her small allotment. She eats her own fresh vegetables, has a bit of a drab fashion sense and is sensible to a fault. And for all the children she helps bring into the world, she has just one child of her own – a son, Simon (Quentin Dolmaire), who is currently in med school and preoccupied with his newly pregnant girlfriend.
The arrival of Béatrice, however, brings out another side of Claire, one that holds grudges and struggles to empathize. A former mistress of Claire’s father – who ran off one day with a large chunk of cash and barely a goodbye, to which Claire attributes her father’s suicide – Béatrice and her flippant attitude, reaching out to simply catch up with an “old friend” (nevermind the fact that Claire was a child then), needless to say is unwelcome. But Provost inserts some extra drama into their reunion, namely that Béatrice has a brain tumor and has returned to Paris to seek treatment. The situation weighs on Claire personally and professionally. As someone in the field of medicine (and just a decent person), she wishes Béatrice well and is compelled to help. Their personal history, however, makes Claire willing to help only to a point.
But, in the original French, “sage femme” has more than one meaning. Claire is a midwife, yes, but in their own unique ways, both Claire and Béatrice are “wise women,” with Claire certainly becoming even more wise as the film progresses. Béatrice pushes her buttons, and she, in turn, pushes away before eventually giving in. This is where Provost’s script falters; much of Claire and Béatrice’s interactions take place over repetitive lunches and dinners that Claire begrudgingly joins, and the two frequently hit on a sore spot from the past or Béatrice’s self-centered pattern of behavior in the present becomes too much to take silently. For all of Claire’s uptight tendencies, she’s not wrong in her assessment of Béatrice; and Béatrice is a flighty person going through a very scary time. But, even then, Provost uses her condition at will, as a convenient device to bring the two women together rather than a true plot point or decisive moment in Béatrice’s life. That in itself may rub viewers the wrong way.
The impetus of the film is not that two strong-willed women reunite over a traumatic event and grow to forgive each other but that Béatrice and all of her rootlessness and spontaneity rub off on Claire and breathe new life into a stagnant one. Neither may be wildly original premises, but the latter comes across as a simplistic, contrived end to a authentically messy tale. If Provost’s script can’t quite live up to their caliber, Frot and Deneuve both lift the material, the former balancing Claire’s personality dichotomies well while the later thoroughly enjoys taking a turn as a carefree lush who has lived life to the fullest.
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