Also showing Oct 27
Winner, Golden Lion at the 2021 Venice film festival.
France, 1963. Audrey Diwan’s film captures the panic of an unwanted pregnancy before the legalization of abortion in provincial France. Adapted from Annie Ernaux’s autobiographical novel, Happening recounts the journey of a young woman’s physical and emotional battle to access illegal abortion in a desperate race against the clock. Anne is pregnant. With mounting suppressed panic, she waits for her period and repeatedly writes “rien” in her diary. Her future is about to be destroyed, but even asking for an abortion is to risk a jail sentence for you and anyone else who helps – or fails to denounce you. Diwan structures the film so that at first we don’t know who the father is, nor do we witness the moment of conception, mirroring Anne’s own sense of denial. The extended duration of the film’s long takes build suspense like a thriller. Happening is a powerful and gripping drama set in a society that condemned female desire and sexual liberty. Despite being set 60 years ago, the film has a disorienting and timeless feel that reinforces the idea that a woman’s reproductive rights are perennially fragile. ~OY
Note: Ernaux is the recipient of the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature