80 THENEWYORKER,M AY16, 2022
THE CURRENTCINEMA
FOR THOSE IN PERIL
“Happening” and “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.”BYANTHONYLANE
ILLUSTRATION BY SALLY DENG
T
he heroine of “Happening” is Anne
(Anamaria Vartolomei), who is
clever, young, industrious, and French.
The year is 1963, and she is studying lit
erature, in the city of Angoulême. In
her path stand difficult exams, though
Anne is expected to ace them; in the
company of her friends Hélène (Luàna
Bajrami) and Brigitte (Louise Orry
Diquero), she conjugates a Latin verb
while lying on a beach. Thus are two of
the prime national objectives, rigor and
pleasure, compacted by the film’s direc
tor, Audrey Diwan, into a single scene.
Sensing that warmth, and listen
ing to Brigitte’s dreamy boast that “if I
were a man, I’d make love to me,” one
might think that we’re heading into
traditional summertime territory—
the kind staked out by Éric Rohmer’s
“The Collector” (1971) and “Pauline at
the Beach” (1983), in which the char
acters muse upon whom to sleep with
and whether or not they should dare
to lose their hearts. What such movies,
lithe and observant as they are, rarely
bother (or can’t bring themselves) to
confront is the practical risk that at
tends these casual adventures. Diwan,
by contrast, is a confronter. You can’t
imagine Rohmer’s Pauline, for exam
ple, inspecting her underwear and fret
ting that her period is late. But that
is what Anne does, and, when she al
most faints on a sunlit walk, it’s not be
cause of the glorious heat or the blaze of
her desires. It’s because she’s pregnant.In a sly stroke, we are never shown
the encounter that led to Anne’s con
dition. In truth, so maidenly does she
appear that, when a doctor examines
her and gives her the news, she sits bolt
upright in shock and declares, “It’s not
possible.” But we are not watching Go
dard’s “Hail Mary” (1985), and there will
be no virgin birth. As far as Anne is
concerned, indeed, there will be no birth
at all. “Do something,” she says to the
doctor. Now it’s his turn to be shocked.
“You can’t ask me that,” he replies, and
adds, “The law is unsparing. Anyone
who helps you can end up in jail. You,
too.” (Abortion was a crime in France
in 1963, and remained so until 1975.) An
other doctor, with whom she pleads for
assistance, fixes her with an unblinkinggaze and tells her, “Leave. We have noth
ing to discuss.” Even her friends shy
away. Brigitte, informed of the preg
nancy, says to the more sympathetic
Hélène, “It’s not our problem. You want
to go to prison with her?”
Notice the tenor of these reactions.
Nobody is moved to ruminate on the
rights and wrongs of the situation. Not
for a second do ethical or spiritual argu
ments of a higher order—what we now
refer to as “prochoice” and “prolife”
stances—impinge. The morality of “Hap
pening” is wholly pragmatic, grounded
in a universal terror of breaking the law.
For Anne, there is a further fear: that,
without a termination, she will be un
able to continue her studies and, by ex
tension, her tough ascent of the social
and professional ladder. This would be
a calamity, not least for her parents, who
run a bar, and who are proud of their
daughter’s brain. “Don’t get sick on us
now. Lousy timing,” her mother says.
Unaware of the pregnancy, she thinks
only of Anne’s exams.
The mother is played by Sandrine
Bonnaire—inspired casting, for she found
fame as a wild child, in “À Nos Amours”
(1984), and as a pungent hobo, in “Vag
abond” (1986). Compare those portraits
of early waywardness with Anne, a model
youth whose one indiscretion portends
a fall from grace. There’s barely a flicker
of wildness in her, still less a will to es
cape. The camera crowds her space and
refuses to let her go; at times, it seems
to be perched on her shoulder, like a pi
rate’s parrot. Prepare to flinch as Anne,
in desperation, seeks a solution to her
plight: first, the nocturnal horror with
the heated knitting needle and the hand
mirror; then the visit to a backstreet abor
tionist (Anna Mouglalis), who delivers
the sternest of cautions—“Not a sound,
not a shout, or I’ll stop.” We see her at
work, framed between Anne’s spread legs.
Still to come, I must warn you, is a se
quence with scissors.
It is the loneliness of this ordeal,
as much as the pain, that makes “Hap
pening” hard to endure, and distinguishes
it from a film like Cristian Mungiu’s
“4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.” (Both
works were crowned with festival prizes:
Mungiu’s at Cannes, in 2007, and Di
wan’s at Venice last year.) The protag
onist of that movie, Otilia, is bent on an
Annelike quest for an abortion—notAnamaria Vartolomei stars in Audrey Diwan’s film, set in 1963, about abortion.