Happening is an abortion drama that’s set in 1960s France but plays as a chilling portent of things to come in America, proffering a vision of the type of hellish world that anti-abortion advocates covet—and, it turns out, seem to be close to attaining courtesy of the Trump-stacked conservative Supreme Court, as indicated by Justice Samuel Alito’s leaked draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade. Director Audrey Diwan’s period piece is thus as timely as they come. A spiritual companion to Eliza Hittman’s 2020 standout Never Rarely Sometimes Always, it’s a simultaneously infuriating and rousing portrait of female resolve and bravery in the face of misogynistic hardship, and one that’s sure to strike an urgent chord when (following its heralded debut at last year’s Venice Film Festival, where it took home top honors) it premieres in U.S. theaters on May 6.
Diwan’s film is an adaptation of Annie Ernaux’s autobiographical 2000 novel of the same name, concentrating on Anne (Anamaria Vartolomei) as she makes her way through another year at university. Anne chats with friends Brigitte (Louise Orry-Diquero) and Hélène (Luàna Bajrami) about what bras to wear and how to roll up their skirts before a night out at the local club, where they dance together and discuss which boys in attendance are attractive and/or paying attention to them. In Anne’s case, a young fireman shows interest, and his profession subtly speaks to the enflamed excitement and danger of sex, as does a song playing at the establishment that coos, “Kiss me baby, my soul’s on fire.”
Anne doesn’t go home with this admirer, and in a subsequent school lecture, she exhibits her intelligence to both her professor (Pio Marmaï) and her classmates. No matter her academic aptitude, which is also a source of pride for her café-owner mom (Sandrine Bonnaire), Anne’s stress over upcoming exams is mounting. Nonetheless, she appears to have other things on her mind, as evidenced by the fact that, in private, she checks her underwear for blood, and then jots down in her journal “Still nothing.” A doctor’s exam soon explains this puzzling state of affairs: Anne is pregnant. That alone is unwelcome news for the student. Yet what makes it truly unnerving is the fact that abortion is currently illegal in the country, with Anne’s physician explaining that “the law is unsparing” and that any woman who tries to terminate her pregnancy will swiftly wind up behind bars.
Anne is in a terrible bind, and Happening assumes her troubled perspective throughout her ensuing ordeal via a carefully crafted social-realist aesthetic that recalls the trademark style of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. Using only occasional sparse music, director Diwan tracks Anne in close-up, both in front of and behind her, attuning her camera so intensely to Anne’s POV that, when the young woman inspects her still-mostly-flat belly, the image’s focus shifts from her mirror to her stomach and back again in time with Anne’s gaze. Diwan achieves a similar effect at story’s climax, casting a darting glance at a traumatic sight before turning away just as Anne herself does, incapable of directly facing the consequences of her decision for more than a second. It’s an approach that creates intense engagement with—and empathy for—the determined protagonist, whose journey is marked by one betrayal after another.
On every side, Anne finds condemnation and exploitation. While Brigitte is comfortable demonstrating to her friends the proper way to masturbate, her opinion of pregnancy is that “It’d be the end of the world” and she decries even the mention of abortion. Anne’s male friend Jean (Kacey Mottet Klein) uses her with-child condition as an opportunity to put the moves on her. Fellow classmates slander her in the shower as a diseased slut. And though a new doctor prescribes her a medication that will apparently facilitate her aims, that turns out to be a ruse, no more helpful than her original physician’s attitude that she “accept it. You have no choice.”
Anne, however, doesn’t accede to discarding her ambitions in favor of a domestic life that, during a beach-getaway weekend together, her boyfriend Maxime (Julien Frison)—the one responsible for knocking her up—makes clear he’s uninterested in sharing with her. Alienation, ostracism and subjugation are the order of the day in Happening, which paints a horrifying picture of the social and societal forces conspiring to thwart Anne’s intentions and continue onward on her promising personal path. Whether it’s individuals overtly refusing to help and/or shunning her for her predicament (and her interest in doing something about it), taking advantage of this situation for their own selfish ends, or merely showing no sympathy for the strain she’s under—thereby saddling her with additional anxiety—Anne is a figure unjustly boxed in by circumstance.
Still, Happening is a horror story whose heroine refuses to be a victim. Anne is a defiant young woman who steadfastly believes that she can, should and will find a way to overcome this obstacle, and that’s most evident in the film’s harrowing amateur and semi-professional abortion sequences, during which Anne’s silent gasps of pain and anguish are as heartbreaking as her courage and strength are moving. Far from a wilting flower, Anne is a steel sword forged and sharpened by trauma, prejudice and the figurative stones hurled at her from every direction, and Vartolomei’s performance is all the more intense for its frequent and charged silence, her eyes conveying a piercing measure of furious resilience.
Happening is ultimately a tale about the endurance required to survive a culture, and nation, that cares little for female agency, conditioning women to accept and embrace the idea that they should acquiesce to whatever misfortune fate throws their way. It’s a small-scale nightmare of silence, submission and suppression, created and enforced by people who expect total obedience to their ideological convictions, and who too often show no consideration for the burdens they’re placing upon others. Best of all, though, in Anne, it’s a poignant celebration of both staunch independence amidst demands for conformity, and radical and righteous rebellion against sexist tyranny—and, as such, an inspiring model for today’s Americans.
