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Arts&Style
SUNDAY, MAY 8 , 2022. SECTION E EZ EE
INSIDE
Following the birth
of cinema — in Paris,
not Hollywood E7
BOOKS: Dennis Hopper, Brooke
Hayward and a unique moment
in cultural history E10COLLECTION STEDELIJK MUSEUM AMSTERDAM/ESTATE OF PHILIP GUSTON, COURTESY OF HAUSER & WIRTH/MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON
CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK
Great art, now with a warning
‘Philip Guston Now,’ controversially postponed in 2020, has opened at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts
“ Painting, Smoking,
Eating,” a 1973 work by
Philip Guston.BY ANN HORNADAY
“This story is related to silence.”
The French director Audrey Diwan
is speaking from New York, where her
movie “Happening” screened at the
Museum of Modern Art the night
before. Diwan’s adaptation of Annie
Ernaux’s m emoir, about her experience
seeking to terminate a pregnancy as a
university student in France in 1963,
won the Golden Lion at t he Venice Film
Festival last year, drawing praise for its
intimate, rigorously observant eye.
“Happening’s” protagonist, Anne
Duchesne, played with quiet determi-
nation by Anamaria Vartolomei, barely
utters a word as her character is driven
to increasingly desperate extremes.
Arriving in American theaters at a
moment when abortion rights are
more tenuous than they’ve been for a
generation, “Happening” might seem
intended as a cautionary tale — a grim
reminder of what’s in store should the
Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade,the 1973 ruling that legalized abortion
nationwide, which it is expected to do
at any moment.
But Diwan insists that was not her
aim. “I don’t like movies to be political
manifestoes,” she explains, adding that
she wanted to make a film that reflect-
ed the cultural silence of an era when
birth control was still largely unavail-
able and it was easier to consign
women to dangerous illegal abortions
than to talk about sex honestly.
“Men were raised not thinking
they’re [part of ] the problem, so they
don’t talk about it,” Diwan notes.
“Women were raised being socially
ashamed of their sexual desire. If they
get pregnant and they don’t like the
idea [of becoming a parent], that’s
their punishment.”
“Happening,” Diwan notes, was the
one book by Ernaux not to get atten-
tion from journalists when it came out
in 2000, suggesting that the silence she
describes has only grown since the
SEE ABORTION FILMS ON E2CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK
Abortion is finally emerging
from the cinematic shadows
“Philip Guston Now” has finally opened — but not at the National Gallery of Art, where it was
supposed to launch in the fall of 2020. In the wake of the police killing of George Floyd and the
ensuing racial justice protests, the four-venue exhibition was controversially postponed because of
Guston’s use of racially charged imagery. ¶ The major retrospective exhibition has now opened in
Boston after the four museums backtracked on their plan to postpone it until 202 4. The show’s n ew
itinerary means it will travel to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Oct. 23-Jan. 15) before enjoying
a six-month stint at the National Gallery (Feb. 26-Aug. 27), and finally traveling to Ta te Modern in
London (Oct. 3, 2023-Feb. 4, 2024). ¶ The Boston presentation does many things right. But it gets
just as much wrong. It should have put up a warning that some viewers might find images in the
show offensive or disturbing and left it at that. SEE GUSTON ON E8BY SEBASTIAN SMEE
IN BOSTONBY THOMAS FLOYD
After four-plus decades churning
through the show business grind, Jeni-
fer L ewis just wants to have a good time.
So when the opportunity arose for the
65-year-old veteran of stage and screen
to star alongside “Saturday Night Live”
alumni Vanessa Bayer and Molly Shan-
non in the Showtime comedy series “I
Love That for You,” she didn’t need
much convincing.
During a recent video chat with her
two co-stars, Lewis c an’t h elp b ut fangirl
over Shannon — even delivering her
own rendition of the “superstar!” excla-
mation Shannon immortalized on SNL.
Although Lewis was less familiar with
Bayer, “I Love T hat for You’s” co-creator,
executive producer and central star, she
now lauds the ever-optimistic 40-year-
old as an “angel made of cotton candy
and C hristmas morning.”
In fact, Bayer helped cultivate such a
cheery vibe on set that Lewis found
herself wondering if the unrelenting
positivity was t oo good to be true. So one
day during filming, Lewis decided to
tackle the topic head on, asking Bayer:
“You’re not going to, like, turn? This is
real, right?”
With understated amusement, Bayer
recalls her retort: “Next season, just wait
— I’ll be a big b----.”
“Which is impossible for her to be-
come,” Lewis says, cackling with laugh-
ter. “A t that moment, I knew everything
was going to be just fine.”
“I Love That for You,” which pre-
miered last weekend and streams new
episodes every Friday, stars Bayer as a
novice home shopping channel host
who saves her job by lying that her
childhood cancer has returned. Shan-
non portrays the network’s longest-
serving saleswoman — a r ecent divorcée
navigating an identity crisis — while
Lewis plays their foul-mouthed, no-
nonsense boss.
Co-created by Bayer and former SNL
writer Jeremy Beiler, the series sells
itself as a moral dilemma by way of
workplace sitcom. And there’s an auto-
biographical element, as well: The
premise is loosely inspired by Bayer’s
SEE TV ON E13‘I Love That for You’ actors
turn trauma into comedic joy