Simone: Woman of the Century (2022) User Reviews

A piece of history in one amazing woman

[CarolineFR69 · 8/10 · 5 November 2022]

Knowing the story of Simone Veil is knowing a bit of the European and French history. She was arrested at 15 because she sang the international outside her home. She was deported by the French government, survived Auschwitz, Death marches, and Bergen-Belsen. She was one of the only females attending the Science Po school at the time, married, had 3 children, decided to get back to her studies against what society wanted from her. She then became one of the first female magistrates, and helped get the prisoners' condition to a humane one. She was appointed as Health Minister and managed to make abortion legal, helped addicts and people suffering from AIDS... She was elected president of the first universally elected European Parliament, the 6th woman to get into to the Académie française, the 5th woman to get into the Panthéon... She fought for the rights of women, she was one of the first politicians to talk about collaboration in France. She was one of the reasons why France and Germany got closer after the war, she fought for Europe as a way to prevent history from happening again. Her life and actions made her a hero for many people in France, which is why a movie was made on her. And what a movie. It is of course a difficult one, but so many things happened to that incredible woman that we need to see it. The movie is a non linear one, which is not my favourite, and sometimes you get bits of stories that don't have any link to the one before, which makes you lose a bit of the plot. But I would still recommend it, at least to see history being made in front of your eyes, by a woman who fought against everything that was thrown against her, for the dignity of the weak.

A faithful biopic but a little too contemplative and pretentious?

[AvionPrince16 · 6/10 · 27 November 2022]

I generally liked the film and the representation of Simone Weil's life, but what bothered me was the structure: I find that we go from adolescence to adulthood a little too quickly and their transitions hurt a little. The head (hardly had we been able to digest the events on the one hand than we moved on to something else: the story seemed rather fragmented and we were going a little against our will and that gave some headaches between the events of his youth that we must remember and the same thing for the transition to adulthood. I also found it unpleasant the fact that Simone Weil enjoys a status: many times we saw her strutting about different celebrities she would have met: I have nothing against that but it seemed futile and I would have preferred a staging or something that would have shown us his celebrity but we have the right instead of a friend who is a little vulgar and envious of a celebrity: too bad. Otherwise the film tells us the v ie of Simone Weil through her various fights: (abortion and its legalization, the rights of women and their emancipation, the injustice done to women but also to male and female prisoners. But also her various dramas that she lived (the death of her brother and her father, the concentration camps - I find this passage a little too long for my taste. We also learn about her school career: the fact that she wanted to work and become independent despite her husband. She became a magistrate, which was quite rare at the time for a woman. There are also misogynistic remarks and the degradation of women and their so-called household role. There is also mention of a woman who would have inspired Weil. We also have a message addressed to the future and to young people. I find the film interesting despite everything, but its structure rather bothered me and the fact that we dwell on the events of Auschwitz seemed to me to be irrelevant because we learn nothing more on Simone Weil but more on a historical event. The step also at the age of child reveals the beliefs of her parents and her ecosystem being younger even if it remains superficial. We also have the significant events of her career and I find that the fact that they insert the fact that she writes her memoirs was rather classical. I don't know if she really wrote her memoirs or not. I don't know either if the film was faithful to the events of his life or did they take some liberties? I couldn't really say because I only know her fights (abortion, abortion) so on that side I can only follow without really knowing if it's really faithful.

Otherwise, I really enjoyed the performance of the actress who plays Simone Weil. I find her convincing as well as the character who embodies her as a teenager. The film takes a few off-topics (concentration camps) but remains pleasant despite a structure that makes you dizzy. Interesting all the same and those who wish to know more about Simone Weil will be served.

Harrowing Holocaust Chronicle Saves Portrait of French Liberal Icon From Hagiographical Treatment

[Turfseer · 6/10 · 21 August 2023]

A prominent liberal icon, Simone Veil stands as the French equivalent of Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the United States. The film, a docudrama, intricately weaves together the tapestry of Veil's life, though it sidesteps chronology, a stylistic choice that might irk some viewers.

Director and screenwriter Olivier Dahan approaches his subject with utmost reverence. Yet, there's a peril that the narrative edges towards hagiography. Veil's persona was akin to that of a Renaissance figure, an attribute compounded by her survival of the Holocaust.

Emerging from the abyss of two notorious Nazi extermination camps, Veil transitioned into a career as a lawyer and magistrate within the Department of Justice. She provocatively advocated for prison reform in France and Algeria, causing quite a stir.

During the 1970s, she achieved fame as the Minister of Health for her pivotal role in legalizing abortion. This move drew vehement backlash from anti-abortion factions, some of which descended into vile, anti-Semitic rhetoric.

Dahan crafts Veil's detractors as a loathsome lot, their perspectives left underdeveloped and unbalanced. The film's latter segments, which delve into Veil's later roles as President of the European Union, a member of the French cabinet, and the Constitutional Council, do pale in comparison, lacking the intrigue and suspense of her earlier chapters.

Thankfully, the concluding third of the film delves deeply into Veil's Holocaust experiences, an emotionally shattering chronicle. The audience is confronted with harrowing scenes of her survival against all odds in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. Although Veil and her sister Milou emerged from this ordeal, their mother was not as fortunate, succumbing to Typhus. Her mother's tragic demise cast a perpetual shadow over Veil's life.

Veil's personal life receives limited exploration, save for a powerful sequence that captures her reaction to her sister's untimely demise in a 1952 car crash. Notable moments also include Veil's impassioned ire over the French public's reluctance to confront their complicity in the Holocaust, a domestic dispute with her husband regarding her career choice as a lawyer, and her time residing in Germany, where she observed the transformative impact of Americanization.

Both Elsa Zylberstein and Rebecca Marder, portraying the elder and younger versions of Simone respectively, deliver convincing performances that anchor the narrative. One is left to ponder how Veil, shaped by her Holocaust survival and activist fervor, might have responded to today's political landscape, marred by the entanglement of progressive principles with corrupt pharmaceutical interests, and the complicity of governmental authorities.

In sum, the film offers a compelling, albeit non-chronological, glimpse into the remarkable life of Simone Veil, painting a vivid portrait of her resilience, advocacy, and the haunting specter of her Holocaust experiences.

The couple of bad reviews is incomprehensible this is an EXCELLENT movie

[katyaregan · 9/10 · 4 January 2023]

I don't usually write a review but had to in response to the couple of bad reviews here.

Those who left bad reviews don't like inventive ways tk tell a story and want spoon fed chronological A - Z storytelling.

This was one of the most truly moving and well done movies I have seen in ages. The acting was incredible they were not "dolls" with "too much makeup on" I have to conclude the reviewer who said that was maybe in the business and jealous that did not get a part. The elder Simone wore some make up as was the era - no one else did!

Days later still thinking about this film. Do not miss it if you can see it. Moving and well done. It will definitely be a foreign film Oscar contender.

A true emotional and inspirational wonder

[florianernst-02102 · 10/10 · 20 November 2022]

I came to this movie knowing a lot about Veil. My girlfriend knew almost nothing. We both teared up and learned a lot in these two hours.

This dive deep into the fight of her life and for her life was an emotional Experience. The distribution and the actors were amazing. The music, the filmography were splendid and gave life to this biopic.

Other comments seemed to find the timelines confusing, jumping from her future to her past. Instead, I found it very well done and useful to the story. Instead of watching her life unraveling, you get to understand what she fought for before understanding why she did.

I recommended this movie to all my friends and family, and their outstanding reception is a tribute to this journey of the century.

What a disappointment

[tonikbabe · 2/10 · 15 November 2022]

If you don't already know everything about Simone Veil's life and accomplishments, this movie isn't for you. And if you do, you probably won't like it either.

The movie constantly jumps from one period to another, from one subject to another, in an unforgiving 2h20 long artsy montage, mentioning people/organization names or showing them speak, without giving any clue as to who/what they are, so no chance to understand unless you're already an expert on the movie's subject.

Sexism is represented as very easily manageable and unthreatening, antisemitism is absent aside from the arrestations and camps...

I was so enthusiastic for a movie that tells Simone Veil's story, this movie is so not up to the task.

Inspirational and Emotional

[brikenave · 10/10 · 22 November 2022]

It is always hard to make a movie about someone who as done so much for humanity in every aspect, putting this in 2h20 is a real challenge. The movie is not perfect there is alot that could have been better, but it is still worth watching. There are some really beautiful parts of it too.

It is a carousel of emotions and history.

Knowing the history of Veil which is an endless inspiration, this movie showed some very beautiful and unique moments of her life. It was a mix of hope and melancholy, yet sometimes a little too overplayed and staged.

The movie was showing someone so strong and intellectual in her most vulnerable moments.

The camera also very intense at moments and the focus on the lighting not so bad either.

Dissapointment of the century

[richardjenkins-47433 · 4/10 · 26 October 2022]

It's a hotchpotch of clips and cameos stitched together with no real sense of Simone's amazing career or achievements. We get snippets thrown at us like custard pies. The steady cam is annoying and the music doesn't add anything to the images.

There are huge indigestible speeches thrown at the viewer and no drama to them, and the horrors of her life are sketched over with far too much pathos and not enough horror. People died in the camps but the screen does not touch us. Even the tragedy of her mother or father are just presented to us like cakes in a window. We don't really know how Simone is touched. I get the feeling they tried to do too much in what is already a very long film at 2h 20. This probably works better as a mini series. The actress who plays young Simone is great, but alas the older actress misses the mark somehow, something is missing and the makeup looks weird. When you lack imagination, you have wigs, but here both are terrible. Its far too French, at the end her French Academy Sword is shown but this means nothing unless you're in the know. The director forgets she was first and foremost a European. At the end a speech to the camera about how history and memory are the same for two generations tries to patch up this films failures but this isn't a smooth film. At the end, the audience applauded this film, but it was half hearted and short lived, almost as if we were applauding Simone and suddenly realised she isn't here to hear it. At a time when Europe slides towards another facist disaster with Brexit and extremism in Italy and France as well as Hungry and a war in Ukraine, we really need this film to work and it doesn't. Instead we realize that the glue that holds Europe together, the future that includes everyone is still a distant dream.

Every aspect of this movie was excellent.

[nesrina-23630 · 9/10 · 4 September 2023]

Every aspect of this movie was excellent. Cinematography, story, acting, casting, places to film, outfits - chef's kisses. The way they chose such similar people in different ages was incredible. And of course, what makes it even more special and amazing is that it was a real-life story. This woman, I have no words; she went through hell and back but still found sympathy and empathy in her heart to do all the noble things that she did. The way she helped in the Algerian case touched my heart. She's amazing, truly and very inspiring.

I love how they portrayed her personality as both strong and courageous, but at the same time, she would cry, she would collapse, and she hasn't gotten over her PTSD. It shows how incredible women are and how they shouldn't give up emotions for power; they can have both. We can cry and then rule the world. That's how it's supposed to be. Not only that, it showed how women's ability to feel and sympathize has so many benefits because if there wasn't this strong, kind-hearted woman in this situation, who would help the poor prisoners?

I loved her relationship with her husband; I'm so glad she found such a great supporter. But they didn't hide the fact that sometimes he can be selfish and can say things that are questionable. But the thing is, he never actually forced her to leave her work, and he didn't give up on her. My eyes still water thinking about them.

One thing I don't know if I liked is the transitions between the times; But it actually paid off at the end when I realized what she truly went through. I looked back at what she did and tied the strings together, and I was even more emotional about it.

Overall, an incredible movie. I will always be a sucker for a biography movie of powerful women.

It took me hours to recover from watching this film

[septimus_millenicom · 9/10 · 3 March 2024]

In the last 30 minutes of so of _Simone: Woman of the Century_, the Holocaust scenes (Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, and the death marches in between), only hinted at in flashbacks before, take center stage. Relentless depravity haunts every scene, interrupted only by brief cutaways to the elderly Simone Veil (Elsa Zylberstein) narrating these personal events in voiceover. These haunting images harken back to the scenes of French/Algerian prisoner being mistreated, and finally explains the explosive outrage that has driven the young Veil (Rebecca Marder) to crusade for human dignity for France's lowest citizens, even its enemies. (Is Veil also paying forward her debt to the Polish death-camp guard-woman's unexpected kindness here?) Watching scenes after scenes of Simone, her sister Milou (Judith Chemla), and mother Yvonne (Elodie Bouchez) clinging to each other in their desperate ordeal, we finally understand the depth of Simone Veil's despair at Milou's death in a car accident, and the film's insistent reminder of Yvonne's influence on her daughters.

In other words, _Simone_ has the same narrative structure as the very famous _Sophie's Choice_. Yet Alan Pakula's 1982 film won Meryl Streep an Oscar and numerous other awards. Olivier Dahan's work has lodged two minor Cesar nominations, winning both; the film is never released in the U. S. And it is the better film, more grounded in reality -- even if the improbable rise of Holocaust survivor to political immortality in France registers as a more "Hollywood" ending! In a way, _Sophie's Choice_ would fit today's trendy discourse about "trauma" to perfection. Veil's unwavering courage and heroism, by contrast, seem to make her a Cold War relic, or perhaps something out of distant Greek myths.

Both actresses themselves have mixed Jewish-Catholic upbringing. Zylberstein supposedly puts on weight and lots of facial make-up for the mature Veil scenes. Her Simone is calm and contemplative, but we also see flashes of the combative self evident in the character's younger years, especially during the abortion debate when opponents rain abuse and bigotry on her. Marder has just starred as another high-spirited, highly educated Jewish girl the previous year, in Sandrine Kiberlain's astonishing _A Radiant Girl_. The effervescence, head-strong determination, and clever repartee are still there in this film. But it is in the last half hour, when she is reduced to an abject squalid wreck, her hair shaved and her words silenced, that you see the true strength of Marder's performance. You always read about the hollowed-out spirit of death camp survivors, their gaze dead, but oh, how Marder's eyes burn! Her character is put on earthwork duties near Auschwitz, then masonry. That rock-like, indomitable essence will never desert her. If there is lingering doubt about whether Rebecca Marder will be a legend of cinema someday, _Simone_ has swept it away. (I see her as the worthy successor to Barbara Sukowa, who has had quite a monopoly on the Hannah Arendt, Hildegard von Bingen, and Rosa Luxemburg "great intellectual women of history" roles.)

But the triumph is also Olivier Dahan's. The non-chronological, episodic, emphatic depiction of Veil's greatest triumphs and worst heartbreaks is exactly what viewers like me, relatively ignorant of Veil's eventful life-story, can benefit most from. (It is how _Maestro_ should have been structured!) Veil's compassion for the down-trodden -- including those afflicted with AIDs -- is particularly touching. The one thing missing from the screenplay is, surely, Veil's political savvy. You don't win world-changing votes, over and over again (on abortion, prison reforms, for the Presidency of the European Union) with only idealism and fervor; you need to know how to court allies. Anyone can be a firebrand. Being able to work with the system and change institutions from within takes superhuman tenacity and courage. On that score, Simone Veil must truly be one of the greatest women of the 20th century.

In terms of the quality of film-making, _Simone_ sends me back to Dahan's previous best film. Not _La Vie en Rose_ which I barely remember, or _Grace of Monaco_ which I did not finish, but _La Vie Promise_. Stylistically they are similar indeed. Both _Simone_ and _La Vie Promise_ convey a sense of fragmentation early on, the flashbacks and present-day events depicted with contrasting graininess and lighting choices. The visuals are perhaps a bit too busy (both feature the 2.35:1 widescreen format, which helps), and the use of music also gets a bit heavy-handed. As the traumatic past is revealed, the debris of memory accumulate, and the poignant voiceover (coming at an angle to the narrative) percolates in our head, the narrative becomes hyper-focused -- the score also distilling into solo piano -- and each film takes on the force of a landslide. It took me hours to recover from the ending of _Simone_. Elsa Zylberstein, also a producer, reportedly labored to draw Dahan out of his post-_Grace of Monaco_-failure self-imposed exile, so the film is about the director exorcising his own demons too! His film is an inspiration to everyone; it is a must-see for the younger generation so often given to fear for the future, to despair.

Abhorrent kitch like you have never seen before

[viridiana2020 · 1/10 · 28 August 2022]

Saw this at the Film Festival in Angoulême and was absolutely shocked by how Jewish suffering during the WW2 was portrayed. The actresses didn't act; they were dolls with too much make-up on and too good of a hairstyle to provoke any sympathy. The structure of the film is pretentious and doesn't work at all. One scene we're seeing images of men in camps in war torn Bosnia, and next scene we're sitting under a moonlit sky in the Mediterranean enjoying a romantic talk. How is this possible? Camera work is ugly; too much steady cam, too many close ups. And don't get me started on the music! Was there even one second when the spectator can catch a breath from the never ending score? No. This director should be banned from making films for life.

A must see to see the Donald for what is not an humanist

[ccarriere-43044 · 9/10 · 4 January 2023]

What an incredible woman, I remember her as a soft spoken woman but with a determination,a force of character, an humanist so much at the opposite of the Donald, the movie was so well realized that the many flashbacks are not to much, the movie start with her remembering her childhood, then her teen, and so on, but also the great moments of her political career, the flashback are used to give us some clues of the sources of stenght of character. The last few phrases that she wrote in the movie are still so a propos with the rise of the narcissistic trumpians in the world, we are so quick to reject the humanity of the Others.

Strong, touching, a must-see!

[office-417-325756 · 10/10 · 12 December 2023]

This movie manages to captivate me for two and a half hours. Touching from the first to the last minute. I knew nothing about Simone Veil, now I adore her. The staging and acting are unique, the decidedly unconventional script is courageous in its dramaturgy and - contrary to what many here in the reviews think - I think it works quite well with all its time jumps. The history of Judaism in the 20th century and also the history of democracy and the importance of the European Union are reflected through a very personal point of view. Although I have seen a lot of movies on the subject, I learned a lot. An unconditional recommendation!