This film was released on Friday 7th July 2017 and is no longer screening. 

Martin Provost’s (Séraphine) The Midwife is a showcase for star performances from two very different icons of French cinema. Claire (Catherine Frot) is a workaholic midwife at a maternity hospital in Paris, devoting herself utterly to what she views as her calling in life.

She has high-minded ideals about the sort of person she aspires to be; she forswears alcohol and favours home-grown produce, virtuous traits that tend to alienate rather than endear her to others. However, with her son failing at medical school and her outmoded hospital struggling to compete with newer facilities, Claire faces a minor mid-life crisis.

Enter the chaotic, frequently drunken figure of Béatrice (a fearless Catherine Deneuve), a former mistress of Claire’s father who wants to reconnect after thirty years, whether Claire wishes to or not.

(Notes by David O’Mahony.)

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