film fatales #213: happening (audrey diwan, 2021)

Abortion is serious business, and a movie that features abortion better be good or it will outrage ... what a woman goes through deserves a powerful film. Of course, abortion is a crucial topic in the U.S. right now, and some movies, which occur in a time and/or place where abortions are hard to come by, really hit home. In Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020), the central character is only 17, and can't get an abortion in her state without parental consent, so she goes to New York. And the brilliant 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007) takes place in Romania during the Ceaușescu era, where everyday life is oppressive.

Happening takes place in France in 1963, and the illegal status of abortion and the accompanying repression reflects our own times. The decision of the young student to have an abortion is honest and considered ... she isn't thoughtless, she is realistic. But the trauma is twofold, because abortion is a difficult decision and the procedures are risky (especially when you must go underground to get it done), and because of the social pressures on women to acquiesce to their situation as they are told to. Happening doesn't hold back ... the various attempts at abortion are grisly and extremely upsetting, and it's a bit hard to recommend the film to anyone sensitive to these things. But it's also honest and necessary, and it's a surprise that it wasn't submitted to the Oscars as the French submission. They sent Titane, another unsettling film that isn't as good as Happening. Titane was explicitly in the body horror genre ... in Happening, writer/directorAudrey Diwan manages to show how an unwanted pregnancy fits into that genre as well, almost accidentally.

This was the first time I saw Anamaria Vartolomei, and she is excellent. The legendary Sandrine Bonnaire turns up late in the film as an abortionist. It's always good to encounter new-to-me talents like Diwan and Vartolmei, even when the film is as disturbing as Happening.