Happening review: Unwanted pregnancy in 1960s France

Six months ago, Audrey Diwan’s insidiously gripping drama managed the impressive feat of getting past flashier – and subsequently Oscar-nominated – titles such as Dune, Spencer, The Power of the Dog and The Lost Daughter to take the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. The jury knew what it was at. Detailing the cold shoulders offered to a young woman after she becomes pregnant in 1960s France, the film works evocative period detail in with implicit warnings against contemporary backsliding on reproductive rights. The relentless clockwork of human biology lends it an awful tension. The actors give in to no cheap options.

Based on an autobiographical novel by Annie Ernaux, Happening – perhaps unintentionally – deflates some lingering misconceptions held about France outside the country. It is 1963. We are among students. You will catch allusions to Jean-Paul Sartre and Jean-Luc Godard in the margins. Though this a rural region some distance from the Left Bank, there is still a whiff of New Wave chic about the young characters. Yet we are hastily made aware that strictures on abortion were at least as severe as those in contemporaneous Ireland. From 1967 to 1975, French women were, like their Irish sisters, making the journey to England for terminations.

In a career-establishing turn, Anamaria Vartolomei stars as Annie, a literature student in the southwest of the country. She and her friends cackle about the opposite sex as young people always will, but when she discovers herself pregnant those contemporaries suddenly turn cold. "It's not our problem," the hitherto sauciest of her friends says. "Want to go to prison with her?" The mere suggestion of abortion causes associates of all ages to blanch as if insurrection has been mentioned in a totalitarian state. Annie meets some open hostility, but, more often, colleagues and officials pretend to deafness. One of her male classmates, approached for advice, responds by hitting on her. This is a film about the horrors of isolation.

Hopelessly hemmed in

Like so many recent arthouse films, Happening is shot in 1:37 Academy ratio and that narrowing emphasises the sense of being hopelessly hemmed in. Laurent Tangy’s soupy cinematography heightens the menace and, in its lack of blaze, emphasises the moral murk that surrounds Annie. But Vartolomei’s fine, unshowy performance does most of the heavy lifting. Like an agent undercover in hostile territory, Annie has to plaster a facade over the strain eating her up inside. New to the challenge, the young woman doesn’t always succeed. Vartolomei allows twitches and hand-wringing to reveal the terrors that almost nobody is interested in relieving.

It has become a cliche to suggest any film that relies on tension "works like a thriller". The hectic, effective trailer for Happening certainly seems to be making that case. For once, the argument is not entirely hot air. Directing her second feature, Audrey Diwan demonstrates gifts that could open any number of doors in genre cinema (not that we are suggesting she enter). The casting alone shows flair. Who would have thought to cast Anna Mouglalis, hyper-glamorous model and actor, as a back-street abortionist?

Seriousness

None of which should distract from the seriousness of Diwan’s purpose. Happening takes a place alongside 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and Never Rarely Sometimes Always as another rigorously executed study of a social issue that is still with us. Many of her friends may still be eaten up by shame, but Annie, more concerned about the damage to her career, is among those that will force change in the following decade. Never Rarely Sometimes Always reminded us, however, that the efforts to scarlet-letter young women are still afoot. Alterations to Texas’s abortion laws and pressure on Roe v Wade suggest the US could soon be turning back the clock.

Sadly, Happening is likely to remain relevant for decades to come.

Opens on April 22nd