“Labor” in all meanings of the word is the subject of this medical movie. Ostensibly centered on the horrifically hectic first weeks of two new midwives at a public hospital in the French city of Toulouse, Léa Fehner’s film, which splices in footage of actual births to provide realistic counterpoint, is really about the exploitation of these staff by a system that is sorely under-funded. Sofia (Khadija Kouyaté) and Louise (Héloïse Janjaud) are roommates and friends as well as novice midwives, and when they start their first day together they’re separated in a cruelly arbitrary way: Though Sofia at first blush seems like the more capable of the two, she’s assigned to birthing-class duty, while Louise, who has just broken up with her boyfriend in a rather loud way right there in the hospital, is plugged directly into service assisting deliveries that she can’t quite handle. “We get the worse cases,” says her senior, Bénédicte (Myriem Akheddiou), “so level up.” We soon understand that the midwives normally handle two or three or even four patients at the same time, and it’s imperative that the lower ranking medical personnel know what they need and when they need it. 

Sages-femmes takes the notion that childbirth is an inherently dangerous process at face value, but goes a bit further in framing it as the kind of emotional event that can break a person’s will, and not just that of the parent. For every woman who welcomes her baby with tears of joy, there’s one who resents the pain and loss of privacy so much that she can’t be bothered even looking at the child. And then, of course, there are the medical emergencies that, in this movie, at least, seem to happen more often than not. Fehner does an excellent job of juxtaposing the technical aspects with the dramatic elements, even if the dialogue is often a bit theatrical (“it requires more than adrenalin”). She also manages to touch every socioeconomic base in making her point about understaffing and general apathy on the part of the authorities toward upholding minimum standards. The most effective subplot focuses on an undocumented woman who gives birth under dire circumstances and then abandons the baby—only to show up later to claim it, professing that she already has too many mouths to feed. Louise naively lets the woman stay in her and Sofia’s flat, which is also hosting the even more naive intern Valentin (Quentin Vernede) on a temporary basis. Though the subplot strains with all these shifts in dramatic direction, it neatly shows the vagaries of a medical condition—pregnancy—that is subject to so much more than just therapeutic attention. All women do not have babies for the same reasons or with the same outlooks and approaches. 

And while much of the action is strong meat—a particularly upsetting medical abortion is depicted—it’s nothing compared to the humiliations imposed by the hospital heirarchy, which only makes the job that much more intolerable. Fehner shows how these pressures get to everyone, forcing them to push through their feelings of rage and incompetence in order to fulfill their assigned tasks. Some quit in a huff, but most have come to the job with a sense of mission that the actors convey convincingly. It helps that all the principal players are women. Men in this world are almost a deadly distraction, and I don’t mean romantically. 

In French. Opens Aug. 16 in Tokyo at Human Trust Cinema Yurakucho. 

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