Review: 'Happening' is a harrowing — and now frighteningly timely — story of a young woman trying to obtain an illegal abortion
When director Audrey Diwan’s drama “Happening” opened in France last year, it was no doubt seen as a chilling reminder of the barbaric times women faced before abortion was legalized there. Opening this week in the United States, it’s a disturbing look ahead to what many women will likely face when — not if, apparently — Roe v. Wade is overturned.
Diwan and co-writer Marcia Romano have masterfully adapted Annie Ernaux’s novel, a thinly veiled memoir of a three-month period in university that threatened to upend her life as it was just beginning. It’s 1963, and Anne Duchesne (played by Anamaria Vartolomei) is a literature major at a university in Bordeaux, with high grades and a desire to become a teacher.
She’s also, at 22, attracted to young men, and they to her — a completely normal thing for a college student to be. One evening, she writes in her journal that her period is late. A week later, she sees her family doctor (Fabrizio Rongione), who examines her and tells her that she’s pregnant.
When Anne tells her doctor that she doesn’t want to be pregnant, and wants help to have an abortion, the doctor won’t discuss it. In 1963 France, abortion is illegal — and both Anne and the doctor could go to prison if he performed the procedure. A title card informs the audience that she’s three weeks along.
Diwan shows the audience the next nine weeks of Anne’s life. She becomes closed off to her college friends, dismissive of the young men flirting with her in the bar. She falls behind in her studies, and argumentative with her mother (Sandrine Bonnaire). She also continues to seek a way out of her pregnancy, even if it means taking on the task by herself.
In a solid ensemble cast — which includes Anna Mouglalis in an uncompromising performance cannot be recounted in text — Vartolomei is a stunning revelation. Playing a young woman risking prison and death to put her life back on its path, Vartolomei gives a slow-burn performance of steadily rising tension.
Anne’s journey nears its end with one of the most unsettling scenes a movie is likely to produce this year. It graphically depicts what pro-abortion rights advocates say with regularity: That laws to ban abortions will only outlaw medically safe ones. It’s a scene I wanted to turn away from, but knew I had to watch, to bear witness to what the real Anne likely suffered before abortion was legalized in France — and what many American Annes in the future will face.
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‘Happening’
★★★1/2
Opens Friday, May 13, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably R for graphic nudity, simulated depictions of abortion procedures, and language. Running time: 100 minutes; in French with subtitles.