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Ten days before the opening of the Olympic hostilities, Netflix has quietly released a diptych-style documentary in keeping with the Olympic spirit: Simone Biles' New Rise, Or Simone Biles: Rising in original version. The opportunity for the twenty-seven-year-old gymnast to look back on the fiasco of Tokyo 2020, the Covid games in the middle of which, despite being the big favorite, she had nevertheless abandoned the race for medals.
A resolutely modern documentary by Katie Walsh, Simone Biles: Rising racks the athlete's brain, who thus agrees to open the doors of his “forbidden closet”The body, the very particular physique of this little woman (1.42 m of muscles) is thus relegated to the background, transforming the adage into “a healthy mind FOR a healthy body”.
If the first episode of this mini-series is dedicated to his iconography as an athlete, his performances, his disappointments, and the famous “twisties” – this evil that professionals fear because it can make them forget all notion of space –, the second part discovers Simone Biles, the woman. The one who loves chocolate, who, a bit tyrannical, seeks to protect her little sister from their family misadventures, who becomes the chief cheerleader for her football player husband, or who always has her hair done by her mother.
A dive into the life (or should we say lives) of Simone Biles that does not fail to place her in the history of a sport, and even in History itself. Coach, colleagues, mentors and role models by Simone Biles follow one another, each one becoming a storyteller, chronicler of an atypical journey, and deeply rooted in current issues: sexism, racism, sexual violence in the era of #MeToo sports, mental health. A liberated, uninhibited, but never victimizing speech, supported by archive images punctuated by all those who paved the way for her in good ways, but also in bad ways: Kerri Strug, Gabrielle Douglas, Aly Raisman, Dominique Dawes, and Betty Okino.
Simone Biles: Rising does not escape the pitfall of hagiography, but we readily forgive it. Its form is erected to the glory of a GOAT (Greatest Of All Times) who has fallen from her little golden cloud to, fighting, start all over again from scratch. A sort of self-made womansymbol of an America on the margins (because it is black), but diligent, in short. However, the humility of this story lies in the dissection of this path to glory: nothing is given, everything is acquired through effort, through hard work. Portrayed as a goddess by the media, Biles “just wants to be human”.
We let ourselves be caught up in this intimate decryption game, whose abrupt ending – barely having started again – is surprising. Less so, however, when we know that two additional episodes of Simone Biles: Rising are in preparation. Conclusion of this documentary chronicle, they will return to an event whose outcome we know: this redemptive comeback of Paris 2024, which the gymnast finishes with her neck weighed down by three gold medals and one silver, but also by a pendant in the shape of a goat… or a “goat” in English.
Simone Biles' New Rise by Katie Walsh. With Simone Biles. 2 episodes of 55 minutes. Available on Netflix.
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