Mark Reviews Movies: HAPPENING

Happening, IFC Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 5, 2022

The characters in Happening aren't uncomfortable, embarrassed, or ashamed to say the word directly or even speak of it in euphemisms and suggestions. They're scared to speak of the subject, as if others will overhear from nearby, in passing, or through the walls—or, worse, as if there are spies everywhere, just waiting and listening for certain terms or phrases to be uttered.

For all anyone knows, there are such people, who won't just hear someone say the word "abortion" or indirectly talk about the procedure. They'll report it to the authorities, and in France in the 1960s, the talk of abortion, let alone any active measures to seek out the means of having one, could put one in prison.

Fear is at the heart of co-writer/director Audrey Diwan's adaptation of Annie Ernaux's memoir. It's everywhere and in everything surrounding and within the film's protagonist, a young woman in her early 20s who has her whole life ahead of her, specific plans for now and later, and the ability and the means to see those dreams fulfilled. There's little that could stop Anne Duchesne (Anamaria Vartolomei), until she begins to feel some pain in her abdomen. It's akin to cramping. She hasn't had period yet, though, and it doesn't seem to be coming, either.

That's the starting point of this story, written by Diwan and Marcia Romano with keen attention to the various and multiple ways that Anne's situation becomes a sort of prison in and of itself. After all, what else is imprisonment, if not institutions and the people within them depriving another of freedom?

Anne experiences those abdominal pains in 1963, while she's studying literature in college. Her plan is to learn here, pass her examinations, and move on to university, where she'll truly begin her path toward becoming a professor.

She's something of an outsider, even though she has friends like Hélène (Luàna Bajrami), Brigitte (Louise Orry-Diquéro), and Jean (Kacey Mottet Klein). They're close, in that the three women spend time hanging out on campus and in each other's dorm rooms, while the four regularly meet at a local club for drinks and dancing.

Anne, though, keeps something of a personal distance from all of them. The two women seem just a bit too self-involved for her liking, with Brigitte being obsessed with men and all of the sex she isn't having. Meanwhile, it's apparent that Jean has a crush on Anne, given how he hovers around her in a slightly possessive way—just as it's clear she doesn't reciprocate those feelings toward him.

As for her family, Anne's trips home to visit her mother (played by Sandrine Bonnaire) and father (played by Eric Verdin) are unpredictable. There's either a sense of casual pleasantness or one of the mother resenting and judging her daughter, and Anne can't be sure which type of visit she'll have.

The point is that, when her family physician informs Anne she's pregnant, there is no one to whom she speak about the matter. She fears what the young women closest to her might say, considering what she knows of them, and telling her overbearing mother and reserved, almost invisible father is out of the question.

When the situation continues and seems to be moving toward an inevitable conclusion, Anne finally does tell Hélène and Brigitte, who retreat and want to hear nothing more of her plans to find someone who can terminate the pregnancy. As for Anne's one-time sexual partner, Maxime (Julian Frison) has certain expectations for his life, and none of them involve her or this scenario. When she asks Jean if he knows of anyone who has been in a similar situation, he jumps to the conclusion that, in his mind, Anne's body now belongs to anyone and everyone—including him.

In this society and under these laws, Anne's body and decisions don't belong to her—a frightening fact that's repeatedly made clear by her friends, acquaintances, and a few doctors whom she meets while looking for a solution. All of them refuse to talk in direct terms, let alone offer any advice, and one commits a form of medical fraud, hoping to sabotage any efforts Anne might make to end the pregnancy. She's forced to do her own research, in person—risking telling the wrong person—and in quiet, paranoid scans of medical books in the school library. The latter, of course, leads Anne to try to take matters into her own hands.

Throughout, Diwan creates a desperate sense of momentum, as title cards announce how many weeks Anne has been pregnant with every obstacle in her way and setback against her search. On top of that, there's a claustrophobic feeling of everything and everyone closing in around her, which is emphasized by the film's boxy aspect ratio, as well as cinematographer Laurent Tangy's use of shadow and tight, discomforting close-ups of Vartolomei's increasingly anguished and exhausted visage (The long-take close-up of Anne attempting the procedure on her own is particularly distressing).

The film simply observes, but in the direct juxtaposition of Anne's helpless despair and the complete absence of genuine understanding or compassion (Anna Mouglalis plays the only character to offer the former, but years of her work has seemingly drained her of the latter), Happening makes a potent statement about freedom denied. It's political, of course, but the message is only as effective as it is because the film exists solely in the realm of the personal.

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