The Law

Leave it to the French to come up with a sexy, riveting film about the legislative process. In The Law, Emmanuelle Devos (The Other Son; Rue Mandar)gives a smoldering, spellbinding performance as Simone Veil, the groundbreaking health minister and leading force behind the legalization of abortion in France in 1975. Born in France in the 1920s, Veil studied politics at Paris’s prestigious Sciences Po during World War II until she and her family were deported to the camps by the Nazis. Though she lost her parents and a brother, Veil managed to survive both Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. A character in the movie speculates that the camps prepared her for a lifetime fighting for women’s rights. After the war, she rose in the national government, becoming Chirac’s minister of health in 1974. In the film, Chirac and her fellow ministers cravenly abandon her to defend the controversial law on her own. As Veil, Devos shows a Catherine Deneuve–like self command that grows stronger as her opposition intensifies. As the attacks grow more personal and anti-Semitic, Veil never loses her mesmerizing cool. With its noir look and artful pacing, the film instills the backroom dealings with all of the edge-of-your-seat tension of a true-crime thriller. —Emily Kaiser Thelin