Happening

In Audrey Diwan’s highly persuasive drama, a young French student sees her promising future slip away when she gets pregnant, in 1963.

Anamaria Vartolomei

This is serious filmmaking of the highest calibre and that is all the more remarkable because its creator, Audrey Diwan, had made only one feature previously. Born in 1980, Diwan became a screenwriter in her twenties and now shares the writing credit with Marcia Romano in their adaptation of a novel by Annie Ernaux. The quality of this screenplay is such that the film feels totally authentic and the direction is so precise that not a shot is wasted. It is entirely understandable that Happening won the Golden Lion at the 2021 Venice film festival and it would have been no surprise had Anamaria Vartolomei received the best actress award. She started out as a child actress and has already appeared in a good number of films but her performance here should make her an international name (she herself is French-Romanian).

Happening takes place in France in 1963 and is a film about abortion set in a time when attempting it was punishable by imprisonment and achieving it was treated as murder – added to which anyone helping was viewed as an accomplice. In 2004’s Vera Drake, Mike Leigh brilliantly studied a time when abortion was illegal in Britain but did so from the point of view of a sympathetic woman who carried out the procedure to help unfortunates. In this film the focus is on a woman in need of an abortion after a single ill-judged sexual encounter: this is 23-year-old Anne Duchesne, the role played so superbly by Vartolomei.

Like Rebecca Hall’s recent Passing, this is a film made very much from a female perspective, but its approach to the material is unflinching. It soon becomes clear that Diwan is uninhibited when it comes to handling nudity (a scene of women showering) or indeed the sexual act (direct, vivid, non-exploitative). But it is late on with the abortion procedure and its aftermath that she shows herself to be unrelenting. It's clearly meant to be uncomfortable viewing, but for some it may make the film too hard to take. Indeed, some viewers might be so repulsed as to view this film as a warning against abortion. However, the fact is that we are meant to see things through Anne’s eyes and, whatever our own view on the issue, to respect the right of choice. Anne is a serious student with plans to find her own way as an adult and the view that she expresses is that she would like to have a child eventually but not at the expense of her own chances to discover life first.

Diwan frequently favours close-up shots and encourages us to identify with what Anne is going through. But, if Anne is always the key figure, the portrayal of the subsidiary characters is highly persuasive too. That applies, for example, to her female friends (each distinctly individual), to doctors (sympathetic or otherwise) and to Anne’s parents (in a fine supporting cast Sandrine Bonnaire deserves special credit as Anne’s mother for her quiet, unshowy performance totally suited to the tone of the film). The writing also brings out the attitudes of those times: thus it shows young women intrigued by sex but holding back save in their conversations about it while also referencing the public’s widespread, disdainful disapproval of girls who find themselves pregnant. My one reservation about the film concerns its music score by Evgueni and Sacha Galperíne: often featuring repeated notes, it seems to seek to express the pressure as the weeks pass during which an abortion still remains possible, but the effect is often self-conscious (I am happier listening to Debussy’s Petite Suite but why that should be heard over the end credits is not clear!). However, that is a minor detail and Happening looks set like that other recent release Playground to be one of the best films of the year. One can't wait to see how the careers of both Diwan and Vartolomei will develop.

Original title: L’événement.

MANSEL STIMPSON

Cast: Anamaria Vartolomei, Kacey Mottet-Klein, Luảna Bajrami, Louise Orry-Diquéro, Louise Chevillotte, Pio Marmaï, Sandrine Bonnaire, Anna Mouglalis, Leonor Oberson, Cyril Metzger, Alice do Lencquesaing, Eric Verdin, Madeleine Baudot, Fabrizio Rongione.

Dir Audrey Diwan, Pro Alice Girard and Edouard Weil, Screenplay Audrey Diwan and Marcia Romano with Anne Berest from the novel L’Événement by Annie Ernaux, Ph Laurent Tangy, Pro Des Dièné Bérété, Ed Géraldine Mangenot, Music Evgueni Galperine and Sacha Galperine, Costumes Isabelle Pannetier.

Rectangle Productions/France 3 Cinéma/Wild Bunch/Srab Films/Canal+/Ciné+-Picturehouse Entertainment.
99 mins. France. 2021. US Rel: 6 May 2022. UK Rel: 22 April 2022. Cert. 15.