Arab Times

In ‘Happening,’ a riveting abortion drama

- By Jake Coyle

‘Happening,’ Audrey Diwan’s Golden Lion-winner at last year’s Venice Film Festival, is set in 1963 France but the period detail isn’t prominent. Instead, it’s an abortion tale that feels as though it could it could take place in many places, long ago or today.

It’s filmed in square-like academy ratio and it’s as if the edges of the frame are closing in on Anne Duchesne (Anamaria Vartolomei), a smart literature student — maybe even a brilliant one; we see her define “anaphora” without hesitation — who is shocked when a doctor informs her that she’s pregnant.

This is 12 years before abortion would be legalized in France and Anne’s predicamen­t is immediatel­y urgent. “Do something,” she tells the doctor, who replies that it’s impossible, “the law is unsparing.” For Anne, her apparently first sexual encounter threatens to derail her life just as it’s getting started. She comes from a working class background. Her parents — and most of all Anne, herself — have high expectatio­ns for her.

“I want to continue my studies,” she tells another doctor. “It’s essential for me.”

Films from Cristian Mungiu’s “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” to Eliza Hittman’s “Never Sometimes Always Rarely” have captured the human toll of systems that give women little choice when faced with an unwanted pregnancy. What distinguis­hes “Happening,” Diwan’s second feature film, is, overwhelmi­ngly, her and Laurent Tangy’s tightly composed cinematogr­aphy and Vartolomei’s riveting, steely performanc­e. To a remarkable degree, “Happening” is viscerally connected with its protagonis­t, closely detailing not just her navigation of social taboos and restrictio­ns but capturing her unapologet­ic determinat­ion. It’s a movie about abortion, yes, but it’s also a coming-of-age tale about a woman’s resolve.

“Happening,” which opened in select theaters Friday and expands afterward, is based on the 2001 memoir by celebrated French author Annie Ernaux, who framed her ‘60s experience as it was recalled decades later by sifting through old journals and memories. Diwan’s film has no such framework, instead preferring to stay rigorously close to Anne’s experience as it’s unfolding. Abortion is to even her friends an unspeakabl­e subject; just the hint of promiscuit­y is enough to make her nearly an outcast. In one frightfull­y vulnerable scene, classmates confront her in the shower for being “loose”.

It’s a fittingly staged scene because in “Happening,” there’s no intimacy or pleasure for Anne’s body. It’s a battlegrou­nd. When she’s asked for her reading of Louis Aragon’s “Elsa at Her Mirror,” Anne describes the poem’s war references. And she, too, is in a kind of war, with seemingly no one on her side, desperate for help — or at least for some honesty. Anne grows increasing­ly isolated but also hardened and defiant. Diwan films her clinical encounters at length and, in a film where no one wants to say the truth out loud, “Happening” culminates in Anne holding back screams of pain because the walls are too thin.

“Happening,” an IFC Films release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Associatio­n of America for disturbing material/images, sexual content and graphic nudity. In French with subtitles. Running time: 100 minutes. Three stars out of four.

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ATHENS, Greece: For Emma Stone, acting in “Bleat,” a Greek silent movie with surreal and disturbing scenes of sex, death, and resurrecti­on, was a profession­al challenge and a relief. Playing a young widow in the 30-minute, black-and-white film, Stone said she welcomed rejoining Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos for the limited-release project set on the Greek island of Tinos and featuring goats roaming its rock-and-thorn landscape.

“What I like about Yorgos would take me a very long time to answer,” Stone said Thursday after a screening for the news media in Athens, and on the eve of the premiere at the Greek National Opera.

“In short I’ll say it’s very rare that you meet somebody who you get along with so well but on top of that artistical­ly (provides) the ability as an actor want to give yourself over to something and not have to worry about every small move you make.”

After winning an Academy Award for best actress in “La La Land” in 2017, Stone worked with Lanthimos in the “The Favourite,” and earned an Oscar nomination as an actress in a supporting role two years later.

They remained friends and Stone agreed to waive her fee and participat­e in ‘Bleat’ — shot using traditiona­l film cameras and presented with a live 36-member orchestra and choir that follows the story with a jarring and funereal score.

The movie opens in a traditiona­l, whitewashe­d home at a wake. There are long portrait shots of Stone and elderly mourners sitting in a room next to her dead husband, played by French actor Damien Bonnard, covered in a white shroud.

After the guests leave, Stone has a moment of ecstasy with his body, bringing him back to life for several hours as she loses consciousn­ess and appears to die.

With goats looking on, the man promptly buries Stone and dances on her grave, before the roles are again and finally reversed, with Stone reappearin­g as he goes to bed and drifts back to death.

“Bleat” was shot in early 2020 on Tinos that’s famous for its whitewashe­d homes just before the pandemic triggered lockdowns in Greece and across Europe, and Stone described the experience as a welcome change.

“What is the point continuing to give in this kind of — no offence — stupid job of acting if you’re not gonna keep pushing and being challenged?” she said. “I guess that’s also true of life.”

The film will screened to the public for three days this week at the national opera in Athens, while Lanthimos and his associates said it could later be made available for limited release in other countries.

“It was important to have this projected from a traditiona­l 35 millimeter print and incorporat­e live music, so that always in my mind,” Lanthimos said. “It’s not just something that someone, you know, would watch on their laptop or on their phone.” (AP)

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