Film Review: Happening (L’événement)
Images courtesy of Rialto Distribution.
Happening is one of those rare films that makes you think just as much as it makes you feel. Its subject matter is intense; a young girl Anne Duchesne becomes pregnant from a one-night stand and is suddenly caught between a painful crossroad wherein one path resigns her to a life of wasted potential and shame, while the other sets her free, only this path appears seemingly impossible to gain access to. The movie takes place in France 1963, in a town where women’s desires are secondary to the life of the unborn fetus, and as such Anne spends the entire film in complete isolation, searching for a way to exterminate her pregnancy. Happening does a perfect job of making it explicitly clear to the audience just how much Anne will lose if she is made to carry out her pregnancy. Anne is shown to be a brilliant student, with a flair for literature and an incisive mind that will take her far and hopefully win her a position at an esteemed university. She is bravely putting herself ahead of societal expectations, and doing what she knows she must to lead the kind of life she has envisioned for herself. However the search for someone who is firstly willing to perform an abortion, and secondly able to do so safely, is a seemingly insurmountable obstacle, which is only emphasised by the sporadic timestamps that appear on screen, noting exactly how many weeks pregnant Anne is, and by extension how little time she has left to escape this unwanted fate.
What adds greater sorrow to the film is that Anne must face this search entirely alone. Everyone she tells about her problem is completely unhelpful and often misogynistic, leading Anne to utter time after time what became her melancholic catchphrase of the film; “I’ll manage”. Director Audrey Diwan is clearly not telling the story of one solitary woman, although this film is based on Annie Ernaux’s novel of the same name, which details her own experiences of trying to get an illegal abortion in 60’s France. The sad beauty of the film is that it is so easily translatable to any era, and therefore to any woman. The panic Anne feels as her bodily autonomy is swiftly stripped away by all the doctors that refuse to give her an abortion is a sting still keenly felt by women globally, and the looming sense of danger we feel for Anne, that at any minute she might be thrown into jail for even attempting to seek out an abortion, is not a sensation that is completely foreign to so many today. Whilst you sit there and cannot help but feel deeply for Anne, you simultaneously cannot help but think of the absurdity of the struggle she faces, and the injustice in deeming this woman incapable of deciding what is best for her.
A wonderful juxtaposition that defines the film is its - almost bizarrely, given the subject matter - warm and nostalgic colour palette. On the surface the film looks as though it should be a beautiful reminiscence of one’s youth and time as a school girl. Anne herself is often seen wearing blush pink knitted tops, set against an almost tangibly warm sunshine that only serves to deepen the tragedy of her situation. This should be a carefree time in Anne’s life, but her spirited teenage years are cruelly robbed from her in favour of social mores and propriety. A time that for everyone else will be a time of sentimental reflection will be entirely marred and stained for Anne. Happening’s talent is the expert adjoining of these two antipodes, that very easily could have become obvious and trite, in a way that is instead delicately sombre, and provides much of the deep melancholy to the film.
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Happening (L’événement) is screening in select cinemas from Thursday the 14th of April. For tickets and more info, click here.