A young woman in 1960s France seeks an illegal abortion in Venice Film Festival winner Happening. More than just a social issue film, it’s a portrait of shame as it relates to desire, morality, and women’s pleasure, writes Amanda Jane Robinson.
Directed by Audrey Diwan (Losing It) and based on Annie Ernaux’s 2000 autobiographical novel, Happening depicts a twenty-year-old woman’s endeavour to access an abortion when it was still illegal in 1960s France. Anne is terrified, yet determined to find a doctor who can help her so that she can continue her studies and follow her ambitions as a writer. Keeping her pregnancy concealed for fear of prison, she is shunned by the girls in her dormitory and betrayed by medical practitioners. As the weeks go by, her options narrow.
French-Romanian actress Anamaria Vartolomei plays Anne with a vulnerable tenacity, those flinty, searching eyes conveying everything we need to know about what is at stake for her character. Vartolomei’s ability to communicate the trajectory of sustained panic with just a look or a tensed lip is to be commended.
The cinematography is close and claustrophobic—we are always right there with her, trapped. The score is sparse and staccato like a ticking clock, or a sentence. The costuming and production design is clever and faithful to the period, yet always feels modern, echoing Ernaux’s writing style.
Since the film’s production, both Poland and Texas have outlawed abortion after decades of permissive legislation, bringing further force to the film’s subject matter. Just this week in Starr County, Texas, 26-year-old Lizelle Herrera was charged with murder for self-inducing an abortion after being reported by hospital staff she had confided in. The charges against Ms Herrera have since been dismissed, but as the Supreme Court prepares to potentially overturn Roe v. Wade, the precarity women with unwanted pregnancies face is all too real.
In an interview with BAFTA, director Audrey Diwan said she knew making a film would take her years, so it was always going to have to come from a very intimate, personal place: “I actually discovered Annie Ernaux’s book shortly after having an abortion myself. It made me realise the strong gap between medical abortion and illegal abortion. I thought I knew what it was, but reading Annie Ernaux I realised I had no real idea of this journey.”
Awarded the Golden Lion at the 78th Venice International Film Festival by jury president Bong Joon-Ho (Parasite, Memories of Murder), Happening is more than just a social issue film. It is a portrait of shame as it relates to desire, morality, and women’s pleasure. To one doctor, when discussing her persistence in seeking an abortion, Anne says: “I’d like a child some day, but not instead of a life”. It is this—the exploration of what it really means to be free, to determine your own circumstances, to choose—that clinches this film.
