This past Tuesday, Staff Writer Ava Slocum finally got to go see one of the film screenings for the Columbia Maison Française’s series Mauvais Genres: French Cinema Takes On Gender. She attended the screening and Q&A for Ladies of the Wood (2021), directed by Claus Drexel, soon to have its theatrical release in France.

The Maison Française’s Mauvais Genres film festival has been going on for more than a month. But before this week, I hadn’t been able to make it to a single one of the films, due to a tragic series of scheduling conflicts (and one film postponement because of heavy rain and a flash-flood warning two weeks ago!).

So on Tuesday night, I was thrilled to finally go to Ladies of the Wood, the second-to-last screening in the nine-film series, followed by a Q&A with the director Claus Drexel. Being there in the small audience in the Teachers College auditorium made me feel special—Tuesday’s screening marked the first time this brand-new film had been shown in the US, and it won’t come out in theaters in France until December.

Ladies of the Wood (in French: Au Cœur du Bois) is a documentary about the transgender sex workers who inhabit the Bois de Boulogne outside of Paris. The nine films in the Maison Française’s series all focus on questions of gender and sexuality as explored in French cinema, from black-and-white movies like the classic Cléo from 5 to 7 to pieces as strikingly contemporary as Drexel’s very recent documentary. Ladies of the Wood consists entirely of filmed outdoor interviews with sex workers from France, Spain, Portugal, and Peru, amid the gorgeous leafy scenery of the Bois at different times of the year. I thought the film was incredibly touching, both for its honest yet compassionate representation of these women’s authentic voices and the alternately sad and funny parts of their individual stories.

Unlike most of the documentaries I’ve seen, Ladies of the Wood has no voice-over narration or scripted through-line. Drexel and his team simply wove together different pieces of footage of the women describing their lives, work, and personal histories on camera. In one candid moment, one of the women asked if there were any questions she was supposed to answer; Drexel’s off-camera voice told her to talk about whatever she liked. The overall effect is a consistent focus on telling these women’s stories through their own words, with little editorializing on the part of the filmmaker. 

The Maison Française’s website described the film as being in “French and Portuguese with English subtitles.” However, Ladies in the Wood also featured women who spoke Spanish and English, which only emphasized the vast diversity of all of their experiences. Everyone featured in the film had a different path to the Bois de Boulogne, but many of their stories shared a common theme of the unique discrimination they had faced as transgender women, especially as transgender women sex workers. “When [people] see a trans, it’s like they see the devil and run,” said one woman in her interview, after explaining how she had been the victim of numerous acts of violence. Several interviewees also brought up the increasing criminalization of prostitution in France in the ’80s and ’90s and how their lives changed as a result, from paying fines and losing work to spending nights in jail.

But many of the interviews also carried with them a note of the women’s acceptance of themselves and pride for their own resilience. “There’s a good side [to the job],” one explained. “I’m able to accept myself as I am. As a woman.” And the nature in Ladies of the Wood is amazingly beautiful. Every interview took place in front of trees with their leaves changing color, and the sound of birds singing is audible in the background through most of the film. When asked if she was ever afraid to be alone in the woods, one woman was surprised: “This tranquil place is very peaceful for me.”

At the end of the hour-and-a-half-long screening was a Q&A session with Claus Drexel and Mauvais Genres curator Nora Philippe, both graciously Zooming in from France during what for them was the wee hours of the night. In answer to an audience member’s question, Drexel acknowledged the limitations of the documentary format when it comes to capturing people’s lives, since “you cannot make a film without stylizing it somehow.” However, he went on to explain the mission behind all of his documentary work: “To me, it is always very important to stay faithful and true to what the person [being interviewed] means…I’m always trying to tell the truth about who the person really is.” Ladies of the Wood certainly achieves all this and more with its tender and truthful glimpse into the lives of the women whose stories it shares.

The Mauvais Genres film festival had its last screening on Thursday night, but more information about all the films shown is available on the Maison Française website, as well as a trailer for Ladies of the Wood.

Film screening in Cowin Auditorium, Columbia Teachers College via Ava Slocum