Happening
Directed by Audrey Diwan
Running time: 1hr40 | REVIEWED BY CATHERINE BRAY
Anamaria Vartolomei stars in Happening
With some films, you remember the stunts and effects. Others, a funny set-piece or the sparkling dialogue. Some films are dominated by their score. Plenty of films are mainly about the story they tell you — the twists and turns, the what-happened-next. Most films are a bit of a mixture, with one or two elements riding high in the mix, depending on the filmmakers’ intent, priorities, budget, talent.
When I recall watching Happening, a year or so from now, I suspect the element that will endure for me is Anamaria Vartolomei’s face. Her eyes, in particular. Now, what I am about to say may or may not be literally true, but it feels true: every other shot in this film is a close-up of Vartolomei. Her expressive, open-yet-closed features compel us to stick close to her character, a schoolgirl trapped in a desperately tense race against time, battling the indifference or ignorance of seemingly everyone in her life. Her pupils seem unusually enlarged, which reads as fear, even in scenes where she is presenting as bold or forthright. Whether this physical fact is a happy accident, a strategy developed in partnership with the lighting crew or something else, it works. There’s the constant sense of someone poised, ready to run, alert and frightened. But since the battle she is facing is an unwanted pregnancy, there is no possibility of physically removing herself from the situation.
The growth of an unwanted embryo is a slow terror, insidious and subtle as a tumour, but you can practically feel the adrenaline and cortisol dripping off the screen as Vartolomei conveys the fear, the stress and the monstrous injustice of her position, which is that in France in the 1960s there is no safe and legal way to access the medical procedure that she needs, an abortion. Instead she’s forced to consider a limited range of dangerous options. It’s as if, in addition to the trauma of a cancer diagnosis, she’s been told she must risk both prison and death in order to pursue a DIY option which will, by the way, cost 400 francs. I suppose the genre of this film is social realism, but in a just world this would be the most disturbing political dystopia imaginable.
HAPPENING (L'ÉVÉNEMENT) (2021) Written by Marcia Romano, Audrey Diwan, Annie Ernaux | Shot by Laurent Tangy | Edited by Géraldine Mangenot
In cinemas now.