The Law

Overview

Directed by French Director Christian Faure and released in 2014, The Law brilliantly traces three days, in late Fall 1974, of stormy debate in the French National Assembly, around a bill which would make "voluntary termination of pregnancy" legal. Behind this bill stands a lone woman brilliantly played by a remarkable Emmanuelle Devos (also in The Other Son): Simone Veil the Minister of Health in the Jacques Chirac government during the presidency of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. During these three days of violent debate Veil, a Jew and Holocaust survivor, is spared nothing: political negotiations, solitude, sparring arguments, insults and violence to her family. In spite of all of this, Veil never wavers.

Cast

Emmanuelle Devos

Simone Veil

Lionel Abelanski

Antoine Veil

Lorànt Deutsch

Dominique Levert

Laure Killing

Françoise Giroud

Flore Bonaventura

Diane Riestrof

Lannick Gautry

Rémy Bourdon

Aurélia Petit

Marceline Loridan-Ivens

Anne Girouard

Myriam, la documentaliste

Michel Jonasz

Gaston Defferre

Michaël Cohen

Jacques Chirac

Olivier Pagès

Jean Lecanuet

Alain Stern

Michel Poniatowski