HAPPENING
****
Director: Audrey Diwan
Screenwriters: Audrey Diwan and Marcia Romano, based on the eponymous novel by Annie Ernaux.
Principal cast:
Anamaria Vartolomei
Kacey Mottet Klein
Luàna Bajrami
Louise Orry-Diquéro
Pio Marmaï
Sandrine Bonnaire
Country: France
Classification: R18+
Runtime: 100 mins.
Australian release date: 14 April 2022.
Set in 1963 in Angoulême, France, Audrey Diwan’s Happening (L’Événement) is based on a powerful 2000 autobiographical novel by Annie Ernaux. It is a searing exposé of a period when women’s rights were severely compromised by a rigid French law that classified abortion as murder and was used to imprison anyone who helped a woman terminate her pregnancy. It’s extremely confronting in its portrayal of a dilemma many women around the world have had to face and it clearly shows the dangers confronting anyone placed in that situation. The fact that the Supreme Court of the USA could be overturning Roe vs. Wade sometime later this year, which would reverse a woman’s right to abortion, shows that this is still a hot-button issue in many countries. It’s not surprising, then, that Happening has been nominated for numerous awards and won both the Golden Lion for Best Film and the FIPRESCI (Critics) Award at last year’s Venice Film Festival. It’s an important film.
Anne Duchesne (an extraordinary performance by French-Romanian actress Anamaria Vartolomei) is a student preparing for entry into university. She is deemed a bright scholar and is encouraged in her studies by her working-class parents who never had the same opportunities for advancement. Her girlfriends are in awe of her and she promises to help them with their studies. Unfortunately, after a one-night fling she falls pregnant and her ‘indiscretion’ leaves her dans la merde, so to speak, as she finds herself without any support - even her friends refuse to assist her because of the legal ramifications - and she is unable to engage a doctor to bring on a ‘miscarriage’; one tells her that, “The law is unsparing” as he angrily shows Anne the door.
Shot in the historic Academy Ratio (1.37:1) by cinematographer Laurent Tangy, the mainly hand-held footage is intrusive and utterly realistic. The camera concentrates on Vartolomei’s face and body for much of the movie, and in doing so it emphasises that this young woman is completely alone with her problem. Tangy’s camera becomes Anne in many scenes; it is her POV, which makes for distressing viewing on a number of occasions. Vartolomei is riveting. Audrey Diwan’s key instruction to her was that “Anne is a soldier” – despite every setback and door slammed in her face, she is resolute, refusing to give up and the actress shows us that strength through her fixed gaze and steely determination. She rarely smiles. She’s on a mission. Vartolomei won a César Award for Most Promising Actress for her brave portrayal in Happening, a decision that’s hard to fault.
The movie is comprised of chapters, starting with ‘Week 3’, where we see the young woman fretting over the lack of her period, before following her through the early weeks of her pregnancy until we arrive at ‘Week 12’. When she saw Happening, author Annie Ernaux commented that, “… I do not think that I would have found the film so absolutely true to life, if it had obfuscated what women had recourse to before the passage of the ‘Loi Veil’ (‘Veil Law’), the 1975 law decriminalizing abortion in France. Audrey Diwan had the courage to show it in all its brutal reality… Only such disturbing images can make us aware of the horrors that were perpetrated on women’s bodies, and what a step backwards would mean.”
The director notes, though, that, “The other grand subject of the film – one that is very important for me – is carnal pleasure. Anne implicitly fights for her right to pleasure. I dislike the idea that a woman’s pleasure is acceptable only in terms of her feelings. In that sense, there is a contemporary, joyful energy in Anne’s story. She feels as much anger as desire.” Happening doesn’t judge its characters and Diwan says she “did not want to pass judgment on [them]. I took them just as I found them: as a reflection of their times.” The viewer, on the other hand, is free to judge their actions as they please. Anne certainly does: when asked why she’s missed so many classes, she replies that she was suffering from “the illness that strikes only women and turns them into housewives.”
Screenwriters: Audrey Diwan and Marcia Romano, based on the eponymous novel by Annie Ernaux.
Principal cast:
Anamaria Vartolomei
Kacey Mottet Klein
Luàna Bajrami
Louise Orry-Diquéro
Pio Marmaï
Sandrine Bonnaire
Country: France
Classification: R18+
Runtime: 100 mins.
Australian release date: 14 April 2022.
Set in 1963 in Angoulême, France, Audrey Diwan’s Happening (L’Événement) is based on a powerful 2000 autobiographical novel by Annie Ernaux. It is a searing exposé of a period when women’s rights were severely compromised by a rigid French law that classified abortion as murder and was used to imprison anyone who helped a woman terminate her pregnancy. It’s extremely confronting in its portrayal of a dilemma many women around the world have had to face and it clearly shows the dangers confronting anyone placed in that situation. The fact that the Supreme Court of the USA could be overturning Roe vs. Wade sometime later this year, which would reverse a woman’s right to abortion, shows that this is still a hot-button issue in many countries. It’s not surprising, then, that Happening has been nominated for numerous awards and won both the Golden Lion for Best Film and the FIPRESCI (Critics) Award at last year’s Venice Film Festival. It’s an important film.
Anne Duchesne (an extraordinary performance by French-Romanian actress Anamaria Vartolomei) is a student preparing for entry into university. She is deemed a bright scholar and is encouraged in her studies by her working-class parents who never had the same opportunities for advancement. Her girlfriends are in awe of her and she promises to help them with their studies. Unfortunately, after a one-night fling she falls pregnant and her ‘indiscretion’ leaves her dans la merde, so to speak, as she finds herself without any support - even her friends refuse to assist her because of the legal ramifications - and she is unable to engage a doctor to bring on a ‘miscarriage’; one tells her that, “The law is unsparing” as he angrily shows Anne the door.
Shot in the historic Academy Ratio (1.37:1) by cinematographer Laurent Tangy, the mainly hand-held footage is intrusive and utterly realistic. The camera concentrates on Vartolomei’s face and body for much of the movie, and in doing so it emphasises that this young woman is completely alone with her problem. Tangy’s camera becomes Anne in many scenes; it is her POV, which makes for distressing viewing on a number of occasions. Vartolomei is riveting. Audrey Diwan’s key instruction to her was that “Anne is a soldier” – despite every setback and door slammed in her face, she is resolute, refusing to give up and the actress shows us that strength through her fixed gaze and steely determination. She rarely smiles. She’s on a mission. Vartolomei won a César Award for Most Promising Actress for her brave portrayal in Happening, a decision that’s hard to fault.
The movie is comprised of chapters, starting with ‘Week 3’, where we see the young woman fretting over the lack of her period, before following her through the early weeks of her pregnancy until we arrive at ‘Week 12’. When she saw Happening, author Annie Ernaux commented that, “… I do not think that I would have found the film so absolutely true to life, if it had obfuscated what women had recourse to before the passage of the ‘Loi Veil’ (‘Veil Law’), the 1975 law decriminalizing abortion in France. Audrey Diwan had the courage to show it in all its brutal reality… Only such disturbing images can make us aware of the horrors that were perpetrated on women’s bodies, and what a step backwards would mean.”
The director notes, though, that, “The other grand subject of the film – one that is very important for me – is carnal pleasure. Anne implicitly fights for her right to pleasure. I dislike the idea that a woman’s pleasure is acceptable only in terms of her feelings. In that sense, there is a contemporary, joyful energy in Anne’s story. She feels as much anger as desire.” Happening doesn’t judge its characters and Diwan says she “did not want to pass judgment on [them]. I took them just as I found them: as a reflection of their times.” The viewer, on the other hand, is free to judge their actions as they please. Anne certainly does: when asked why she’s missed so many classes, she replies that she was suffering from “the illness that strikes only women and turns them into housewives.”