(Check out Lauren Wissot’s Stray Bodies movie review. Seen it? Join the conversation with HtN on our Letterboxd Page.)
Though Elina Psykou’s Son of Sofia took top honors in the International Narrative section back at Tribeca 2017, the acclaimed Greek director’s first documentary, last year’s unconventionally cinematic Stray Bodies, has yet to find distribution on these shores. Which is an inexplicable shame. Debuting at Thessaloniki Documentary Festival 2024 – where riot police were dispatched in response to far-right threats – the film next played CPH:DOX (where I saw it), before hopping the pond over to Hot Docs in Toronto. It was a notable festival journey for a doc about “involuntary body-related traveling” (as the CPH:DOX synopsis so spot-on stated) – specifically throughout Europe, but in the wake of a global crackdown on reproductive rights, a topic not far from anyone’s shores.
Indeed, the dark absurdity of traversing (nation) states to access different forms of medical care is a Kafkaesque plight all too familiar to those of us in the US, with the chaos unleashed by the Dobbs decision reverberating to this day. Unfortunately, much of the European Union is likewise a dysfunctional mess held hostage by the twin opportunistic forces of politics and religion. Access to abortion is really no better in parts of Southern Europe than it is in the US South – with Malta perhaps the EU’s very own Mississippi.
Witty signs held at a rally in the European Union’s tiniest capital cry, “Safe and legal abortion equals pro-life,” “Get your rosaries off my ovaries” and “Mind your own uterus” (all obviously directed at an audience extending beyond the city-state’s borders as none seem to be written in Maltese). It’s here that we’re introduced to and follow our first medical tourist protagonist (and performance artist – who does a kickass lip sync to “Papa Don’t Preach”) as she makes plans to terminate her accidental pregnancy in Italy where the procedure is legal. Though why a Catholic country like Italy supports a woman’s right to choose while a Catholic land like her own still bans it remains a patriarchal puzzle.
Nevertheless, once over in Italy we meet her opposite – a “procreative tourist” faced with an equally frustrating conundrum. “How is it that I cannot have a child without having sex, but Mary can?” she wonders, referring to the fact that IVF is illegal there. And soon we’re introduced to the male (of course) leader of the “People of the Family” party, who counters “Life is not just about fulfilling desires,” and views children as a “gift” not a “right.” The family man laments a society “that does not know how to accept the disadvantages that nature poses” and considers IVF “eggsploitation” (per a documentary of that title, which he urges the filmmaker to watch). Later he adds that in vitro fertilization is a form of Nazi eugenics, one in which Down syndrome babies get systematically eliminated. As for creation, this proud papa notes that the only thing the EU ever managed to create was the euro – the currency that unites but also divides countries. He claims he simply wants less homogeneity and more “diversity” within the EU (i.e., an argument for states’ rights). Though all this reasonable pontificating would naturally lead to the end of bodily autonomy, the power of this practiced politician’s talking points cannot be denied.
However, IVF is legal in the director’s homeland – the next stop on our medical tourism excursion. (Though we’re also soon privy to an English headline that reads, “Why Satanists may be the last hope to take down Texas’s abortion bill,” under which “Satan Wants Legal Abortions” is written in Greek.) “Every choice is a risk,” offers a woman with ALS, using her speech-generating device to communicate that she would have chosen euthanasia had it been allowed in Greece. However, we’re likewise introduced to a Greek monk who uses his communication machine to rail against physician-assisted death, viewing his incapacitation as a lesson from on high.
And then there’s the Swiss doctor, a globetrotting advocate for assisted dying, who doesn’t see performing the procedure as interfering in life and death matters any more than when she acts as a physician implanting a stent to keep a patient alive. That said, she then launches into a passionate and unexpected monologue in which she decries a healthy embryo – one that would choose life “if it had a voice” – being “killed,” while a suffering person with an actual voice is not allowed to die. The abortion process involves an embryo being sucked into a bucket, she firmly states, where it “suffocates like a fish on dry land.” Her conclusion? Doctors should not be forced into providing abortions – nor into assisting in dying. A practical approach that takes into account the individuals on either side of an issue may be commendable but it’s also rather unnerving. And every bit as thornily elusive as the film’s title might imply.
– Lauren Wissot
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