Passage

Pauline Higgins

France

Synopsis

A first-hand account of the life and work of midwives, whose profession occupies the space between spirituality and medicine.

REVIEW

Pauline Higgins' stunning short (think middle Antonioni) gives us a cold, clear measure of the distance between contemporary technology and the human body during the event of birth. In a sterile clinic, a fetal heartbeat pulses out a flashing light as a myriad of LEDs testify to scientific control over the entry of a new human into the world. A normal, healthy delivery hardly seems possible without an incomprehensible matrix of wires, tubes, and monitors. Technological authority reduces the woman's body to a dumb object.

The sound track, based on ambient noises of the machines and only rarely on the human voice, lets us experience the separation here of the event from the actual female body and its life-giving travail. The realm of women's knowing that includes birthing has been colonized entirely by the techno-logos of post-modern convictions. Whatever else it does, science provides safety; medicine is authoritative; women are subjects; babies are units. Are we already at this point? This is committed filmmaking at its best.

-Beverly Allen