28/04/2022 - Myleine Guiard-Schmid focuses on Gustave Courbet's The Origin of the World in her new short

For something that half of the population regularly experiences, the act of giving birth still leaves more questions than answers. Some claim that we know too much about it and there are too many options available to confused future mothers, while others blame “the silence of women” and recount ordeals that have left them traumatised. Some can only remember the pain. Others say they forgot it after taking one look at their child.

In her short Crotch Stories, now being presented at Hot Docs, Myleine Guiard-Schmid keeps thinking about it, too. There are stories of the “Lamaze method”, advertised as painless and yet anything but (“After giving birth, I said: ‘Never again. Never again will I say it doesn’t hurt’,” says one interviewee), or of how an orgasm could help with the delivery. One thing is for sure – with few exceptions, most women won’t be allowed to be free during childbirth anytime soon, or to follow their body’s instinctual responses. It may have to do with the strict system in place or with misogyny, as men continue to make decisions about things they cannot experience. There is an echo of that famous Gloria Steinem statement claiming, “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.” If men could get pregnant, maybe it wouldn’t hurt so damn much, still.

“Giving birth and telling a story are similar. It’s bringing a story into the world. It’s unpredictable,” Guiard-Schmid says here, combining different animation methods and, for all the seriousness of the subjects that are being discussed, still keeping things playful. Some sequences feel like they’ve been lifted straight from a Buster Keaton silent comedy. There’s even a train.

Her protagonists admit to looking at other pregnant women sometimes, wondering what it will be like for them, wondering if the memory of delivery, especially of the traumatic kind, is something a child can pick up on later. “In pain you will give birth to children,” it says in the Bible, and for some reason, people didn’t really question this line too much. But Guiard-Schmid isn’t people, and her question is simple: “Why? Why not in pleasure?”

It might be because women have a complicated relationship with pleasure in general – whenever sexuality is involved, they are still being shamed, hurt, kept in the dark about what their body can do and what it can receive. But they are certainly hoping for a better future for their daughters. And for more choices. “Women’s human rights are compromised and violated around childbirth,” stated the HRiC (Human Rights in Childbirth) organisation, and it’s hard to disagree. But they are making sure their voices are heard these days, clearly fed up with that “suffer in silence” code of conduct. It might be early, but that’s how you kick-start a significant change: by talking about it, by being loud. And sometimes, I’m sorry, by being a bitch about it as well. If having pleasure as a woman really means being “a bitch”, “I hope we all find our inner bitch,” adds Guiard-Schmid. How’s that for a Sunday blessing?

Crotch Stories is a French-Belgian short film staged by Lucie Fichot for Folle Allure Films and by Absinte Abramovici. It was co-produced by Ellen Meiresonne for Atelier Graphoui, and its international sales are handled by Manifest.