Histoires d’entrejambes

In a number of countries you can now have a fully automated birth on a cloud of epidural bliss. To the rest of the world, having a baby is simply a matter of suffering pain. In this visual essay, Myleine Guiard-Schmid wonders why. Aside from the fact that it brings the joy of a new life, why can’t childbirth be pleasurable?

Guiard-Schmid talks to women who professionally assist women giving birth or who have given birth themselves. They tell her about the disappointing and anything-but-painless Lamaze method, about masturbation as pain relief, and how an orgasm can help the delivery. Meanwhile, the filmmaker muses about her far-from-weaker sex, and about the woman who threatened her gynecologist with castration when he wanted to cut her perineum.

All of this is captured with a lavish palette of animation. Playful stop-motion sequences (and a witty Buster Keaton reference) effortlessly transition into drawn and painted animations that exuberantly navigate between abstraction and realism.