Throughout Happening, director Audrey Diwan’s use of handheld camerawork and tight close-ups, combined with the intense focus on an intimate ethical dilemma, makes comparisons to the work of the Dardenne brothers all but inevitable. But these familiarities become less distracting soon after the film’s protagonist, Anne (Anamaria Vartolomei), discovers that she’s pregnant following a summer fling. By taking a clear moral stance on its central subject of abortion and remaining deeply attuned to Anne’s psychological and emotional state, Happening comes into its own over the course of its final hour.
As Anne is forced to navigate the arduous process of getting an abortion in 1963, when even assisting someone to find an abortionist could lead to jail time, she sees her chance at the future she wants for herself slip away. Set at a conservative university in the southwest of France, where the prospect of going to school as a single mother is unthinkable, Happening exhibits a profound understanding of the moral and emotional mechanics that are, often surreptitiously, at work in this environment. The mostly puritanical girls in Anne’s dorm who bully her for being, in their minds, a girl of loose morals are blunt in their judgments. But the reactions from her friends, classmates, and general practitioner upon learning of her condition, while generally more compassionate, are even more devastating to Anne.
Anne’s doctor (Fabrizio Rongione) is extremely sympathetic of her situation, yet he scolds her nonetheless, reminding her that she can’t even talk to him about an abortion. Her best friend, Brigitte (Louise Orry-Diquéro), more or less tells her the same thing, coldly adding that “it’s not our business.” They understand that her dream of being a writer would certainly die upon the birth of her child, and there’s an overwhelming aura of fear and apprehension that pervades every conversation about the topic. It’s as if even the word “abortion” is all but unspeakable, so they instead gently reinforce the lack of choice that she has in the matter.
Anne’s desperation becomes downright existential upon her realizing that no one in her inner circle is willing to help, so she continues to search for ways to follow through with her decision to have an abortion. Vartolomei, with her steely gaze and implacable demeanor, is never short of compelling, convincingly conveying the young woman’s prickly, tenacious nature and resounding inner strength. Yet she also exudes an underlying tenderness and sense of unease beneath this tough exterior, particularly as Anne’s situation becomes more tenuous.
Diwan marks each subsequent week of Anne’s pregnancy with intertitles, contributing to a rising tension as an uncertain point of no return quickly approaches. The intensity of this suspense is surpassed only by Anne’s alienation, not only from everyone around her, but also from her ever-changing body. But while the desperate measures that Anne takes are increasingly harrowing, including an attempted self-induced abortion that’s subtly but viscerally depicted, Happening avoids dipping into arthouse miserablism by also focusing on the small, informal network of people who eventually come to Anne’s help.
The sleazy Jean (Kacey Mottet Klein), who hits on a pregnant Anne at one point, even going so far as to make the case that sex with her would have no consequences, initially refuses to help her. But he eventually changes his tune and links her to a back-alley abortionist, Madame Rivière (Anna Mouglalis). Later, one of Anne’s close friends, Hélène (Luàna Bajrami), also has something of a change of heart, admitting that she, too, had a summer fling, and that Anne’s situation made her realize that she was lucky to not have gotten pregnant.
Happening uses these about-faces not as a means of suggesting that these characters have suddenly become enlightened, but rather to accentuate their contradictions. It also highlights the overpowering stranglehold that then-current abortion laws had on the consciousness of even compassionate, liberal-minded students. The psychological turmoil and agonizing isolation that all of this puts Anne through lends Diwan’s film a gripping immediacy that’s further reinforced by its general avoidance of period details in its costumes and settings. As such, it manages the difficult task of speaking to our current moment, where women are increasingly facing hurdles to abortion access, without being didactic or preachy.
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