Film

‘Illegal abortions are not an old story for many women’

Audrey Diwan on her new film, Happening, based the 2000 memoir by celebrated French writer Annie Ernaux

Tara Brady's face
Tara Brady
Tue Apr 19 2022 - 00:00

Following in the footsteps of Cristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and Eliza Hittman’s Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Audrey Diwan’s powerful period drama makes a devastating case for sexual and reproductive freedom.

Adapted from L’Événement, the 2000 memoir by celebrated French writer Annie Ernaux, Happening recounts the author’s desperate attempts to get an abortion when she was a promising young student in 1964, a decade before France legalised abortion in 1975.

“I wasn’t never thinking, oh, I’m going to make a movie about illegal abortion,” explains Diwan. “I was very interested in that particular character and the way she fights for sexual freedom. She talks about sex, which was not that easy at the time. There is no story about illegal abortion if we’re not talking about sex, because the two of those things are related. The character wants to have an intellectual future. She comes from a lower social class and hopes to move to another. So, in many ways, she decides to go against what society expects of her with some very strong determination. These most intimate things are also very political. And abortion itself is obviously a very serious, important issue. But it also ties to other social and sexual expectations.”

Anamaria Vartolomei in Happening, based on Annie Ernaux’s memoir about her desperate attempt to get an abortion when she was a promising young student in 1964

Reading the book, I realised how random illegal abortion is... Medicalised abortion has a routine. Illegal abortion does not. It's dangerous. The suspense that comes with it is unbearable

Happening, which won the Golden Lion at Venice last year, often feels like a thriller, a fitting overlap with Diwan’s previous work, including the high-octane actioners Paris Under Watch, The Connection, and Bac Nord. That drama occurred organically, says the novelist, screenwriter and director, given the ticking clock that governs the film and the unsympathetic reactions that the film’s heroine experiences. It’s a nail-biting watch.

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Anne, as realised by the extraordinary young actor Anamaria Vartolomei, is a gifted literature student from a working-class background. Her unwanted pregnancy jeopardises everything she hopes to achieve, but she cannot bring herself to confide in her perplexed mother (Sandrine Bonnaire) or concerned professor (Pio Marmaï). Her peers, meanwhile, are mostly unmoved by her plight (“Do as you please, it’s not our business,” sniffs one pal), echoing the position of the medical establishment.

“I want to continue my studies,” she tells a doctor, who unceremoniously demands she leave his office. Another prescribes medication “to make your period return”, a treatment which, it transpires, is a concoction to strengthen both pregnancy and embryo.

“I had in mind that this issue was settled in the past in France, but nowadays it is creating different conflicts around the world,” says the director, who co-wrote the screenplay with Marcia Romano, in consultation with Ernaux. “But when we were trying to make the movie and find the money, many people told me and my producer, ‘why do you want to read this story now? We’re in France, we have the law’. I thought: I really hope – from the bottom of my heart – that you’re going to ask the same question of the next director that comes to you and wants to make a film about World War two. Illegal abortions are not an old story for many women.”

Audrey Diwan: ‘I think it’s fascinating to work with bodies...working out how to tell a story through the body’

The film culminates in a gruelling depiction of the aftermath of a contemporaneous backstreet abortion, a procedure that, in real life, almost cost Ernaux her life. It was a difficult scene to shoot, as were the character’s homespun attempts to end the pregnancy. A largely female crew – including production manager Monica Taverna and assistant director Anaïs Couette – helped to fashion a safer space.

“I think it’s fascinating to work with bodies, talking about bodies and talking about sex, and working out how to tell a story through the body,” says Diwan. “Even with the act of sex, you can’t just take two actors and tell them: now you’re going have sex. There has to be a story in the sex or you’re going to be in trouble. And then, if you work on the idea of pain, that has a story. And this was very difficult, because Anamaria would always tell me that she never experienced that much pain. So we had to find images and ideas to help us. And we had to abandon ourselves and stop being in our own psyche. Reading the book, I realised how random illegal abortion is. I could feel the pain and uncertainty in my body. Medicalised abortion has a routine. Illegal abortion does not. It’s dangerous. The suspense that comes with it is unbearable.”

Vartolomei heads a vogueish cast that also features Luàna Bajrami, whose directorial debut film The Hill Where Lionesses Roar premiered in Cannes Directors’ Fortnight last year, and Louise Chevillotte, star of Paul Verhoeven’s incoming nunsploitation flick, Benedetta. It’s a fiercely brave lead performance, one that has earned the actor a César. Earlier this year she was listed among Berlin’s Shooting Stars and was named Best Actress at the Dublin International Film Festival. Unsurprisingly, from the moment Diwan auditioned Vartolomei, she knew she had found her heroine.

“She was nearly interviewing me from the first time she came into the room,” says the filmmaker. “She said: ‘Audrey, I do believe that I will have to be naked in that place and I want to hear, in your words, why I should do that?’ I was thinking, okay, somehow she’s already my character. I had an inner smile. Anamaria is many things. I was amazed by her maturity. She was only 20 when I met her. She has a very strong personality, she’s very smart, and she has a very subtle way of acting. I knew I was going to be making a film that stayed close to her face. So I needed someone who would be able to give lots of emotion without doing too much or overplaying. The character is a young girl studying literature and Anamaria has a strong relationship with words. And we had lots of discussions about relevant films like the Dardennes’ Rosetta and Gus van Sant’s Elephant. Especially when Covid delayed production and gave us lots of rehearsal time. You know, as a director, I’m really not a puppet master. I love to find in my actress or actor, some intellectual partners, and explore together.”

Happening opens April 22nd