Last night I rented another abortion-themed movie from iTunes, this one for $6.99 rather than $3.99, further donating my rental dollars to the cause. (If you want to see what I'm talking about, read this post.) This time it also counts toward my current year movie rankings.
Happening was released in France last year, but has made its way to the rest of the world in 2022, and I'm not sure how it could be more timely. Audrey Diwan's adaptation, which she also directed, of Annie Ernaux's eponymous novel about her own experiences looks at what it was like to try to get an abortion in France of the 1960s, when it was illegal, when it could lead to the jailing of the person in question, and when the attempt could also lead to her own death due to such ill-considered home remedies as trying to put bleach in her uterus.
When they started making the movie, they couldn't have known the Supreme Court was about to overturn Roe v. Wade -- though of course it's only an American-centric worldview that considers the U.S. to be the only country where reproductive rights are being fought over.
For me as a viewer, the film reminded me most of 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Cristian Mungiu's 2007 film that became my #2 of 2008 when it had a similar release a year later outside of its home country of Romania. That film really stuck with me, despite only that single viewing, and made my top ten of the decade. I still haven't seen it again, perhaps because the subject matter is so hard to watch.
Happening is not the film that is, but it's an important film. Interestingly, though, it could make the case for both sides of the argument.
The right to a legal abortion is clear in every moment of this film, given the lead character's attempts to end her pregnancy -- which she can't even talk about in the open without fears of imprisonment. The lack of anyone to help her leads her to take matters into her own hands at one point -- though fortunately not with bleach. She does eventually find someone with medical training who may be willing to help under the shroud of heavy secrecy, though even this is not an experience without its significant travails and threats to her life. (It's not a spoiler to tell you she survived, since we already know the novel was based on the life experiences of its author.)
However, the movie might give just as much ammunition to a pro-lifer. As the pregnancy ticks on into later and later stages and an abortion becomes increasingly less viable -- not quite but almost to the period of time depicted in the title of the Romanian film mentioned earlier -- we get, shall we say, certain biological reminders of just how far along this fetus is in its development. There's a "money shot" here just as there was in 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.
Of course, no one but the most deluded conservatives could think that Diwan was making a movie that argued for the right to life of the fetus. Really, her movie is just about the horror show that is this whole process, and why it can't be allowed to get to this point of visceral reality. Legal abortions keep the whole thing within the realm of medical safety and prevent the sort of body horror we see here.
Although some of the scenes in Happening will be the thing people talk about most for their unsparing biological detail, the real message here is not how an abortion occurs, but why a woman might want one.
Anne (Anamaria Vortolomei) is not a promiscuous type -- not that that should matter anyway (no slut shaming here) -- but an extremely studious one, who aspires to teach or write. She has all the answers when her professor calls on her, in direct contrast to the "je ne sais pas" ("I don't know") offered by her classmates. There's no doubt she could go far, and will -- unless she's consigned to the role of a "housewife."
Although Anne does try to be discreet when all the people around her try to shush her, never knowing who will report her to the authorities, she takes a risk at one point to explain to her professor why she's fallen behind in class and needs his lectures to catch up in time to take her exams. He asks if she's been ill, and she confirms she has -- "the illness that only affects women and turns them into housewives."
If we shouldn't slut shame Anne, we shouldn't housewife shame those who want to do that. But that's not Anne, and even if she were inclined that way, the father has no interest in it. Anne wants to retain control of the trajectory of her own life, explaining that she's not sure she could love a child if that child prevented her from having the life she believe she's capable of -- the life she wants.
So Anne is fighting for life alright -- her own. She's fighting to have a life, and the sacrifice she must make is a child who isn't a child yet, who she wants eventually but who came along too soon. And when she's ready for that child, she'll be that much better of a mother to it.
Anne is pro-life by being pro-choice, though that term probably didn't exist back then. It's what pro-lifers don't seem to understand. Women who choose to have an abortion are fighting for the net good of one life, when the other option is the net bad of two . And it will be the net good of two lives eventually, when and only when she's ready.
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