Simone: Woman of the Century

I’m staring at the screen, and I can’t quite figure out where the actress ends and the historical icon begins. It’s a strange sensation, watching a face that has been so meticulously reconstructed through prosthetics that it borders on the uncanny. While watching Simone: Woman of the Century, I was wearing a pair of incredibly itchy wool socks that made me twitch every ten minutes, yet the sheer gravity radiating from the screen kept me pinned to my seat. This isn't just a biopic; it’s an attempt to bottle the lightning of a soul that survived the absolute worst of the 20th century only to spend the rest of it demanding the world become more human.

The Face Behind the Legislation

The film takes a massive gamble by splitting the life of Simone Veil between two performers, and honestly, the payoff is what keeps the 140-minute runtime from feeling like a slog. Rebecca Marder carries the torch of the younger Simone, navigating the horrors of Auschwitz and the subsequent trauma of a "normal" life that feels anything but. She brings a raw, vibrating anger to the role—a refusal to be a victim that feels remarkably contemporary. Then there’s Elsa Zylberstein, who spent years championing this project. She plays the elder Simone, the political powerhouse who forced the French Assembly to legalize abortion in 1974.

Elsa Zylberstein is buried under layers of aging makeup that, at times, looks like it’s auditioning for a role in a high-budget sci-fi epic, but her performance pierces right through the latex. She captures that specific, icy resolve Veil was known for—the kind of look that can silence a room of shouting men without raising a finger. The chemistry between the various stages of her life is handled through an edit that refuses to stay still, jumping from the 1940s to the 1990s and back again, suggesting that our past is never really behind us; it's just sitting in the next room.

A Jigsaw Puzzle of a Life

If you’re looking for a straight "A-to-B-to-C" narrative, Olivier Dahan is going to frustrate you. Much like he did with Marion Cotillard in La Vie en Rose (2007), Dahan treats chronology like a suggestion rather than a rule. The film is structured as a series of echoes. We see a political debate in the 70s, which triggers a memory of a childhood beach in Nice, which then slams into the grey, frozen reality of the camps.

It’s a maximalist approach to filmmaking. The score by Olvon Yacob is sweeping, the cinematography by Manuel Dacosse shifts from warm, nostalgic ambers to the stark, desaturated tones of the Holocaust. Some might find the stylistic flourishes a bit much—Dahan isn't a director who understands the concept of "less is more"—but I’d argue that Veil’s life was so sprawling and impactful that a quiet, understated film would have felt dishonest. It needs this scale. It needs the melodrama because the stakes were, quite literally, life and death for millions of women and the very soul of Europe.

The Urgency of Now

What struck me most while watching this in our current era of "franchise fatigue" and streaming saturation is how much it demands your intellectual participation. In an age where we often consume content while scrolling through our phones, Simone forces a confrontation with the recent past. Released in the wake of global shifts regarding reproductive rights, the scenes where Elsa Zylberstein faces down a phalanx of vitriolic, sexist politicians feel less like "history" and more like a mirror.

There’s a bit of behind-the-scenes grit here, too. Elsa Zylberstein reportedly spent up to seven hours a day in the makeup chair to achieve that transformation, and she actually met with Veil several times before her passing in 2017 to study her cadence. That level of "method" dedication often results in something stiff, but here it feels like a genuine tribute. The production didn't shy away from the darker corners either, filming in locations that evoke the claustrophobia of the era's social constraints.

The film does occasionally stumble into the "greatest hits" trap of biopics, where it feels like it’s checking boxes of historical achievements. However, it saves itself by focusing on the Jacob family—Simone’s mother Élodie Bouchez and sister Judith Chemla provide the emotional marrow of the story. These relationships explain why Simone fought the way she did. It wasn't just about policy; it was about the ghosts she carried with her.

Ultimately, Simone: Woman of the Century is a dense, demanding piece of cinema that rewards your patience. It’s an unapologetically French production—grand, emotional, and fiercely intellectual—that manages to make legislative sessions feel as high-stakes as a thriller. While Dahan’s non-linear editing might leave some viewers reaching for a map, the strength of the lead performances ensures that the emotional North Star is never lost. It’s a film that understands that the "Woman of the Century" wasn't a saint, but a survivor who decided that the world didn't have to stay broken.