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Sundance Film Review - Happening

Anamaria Vartolomei appears in Happening by Audrey Diwan, an official selection of the Spotlight section at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.
Sundance Institute
/
IFC Films
Anamaria Vartolomei appears in Happening by Audrey Diwan, an official selection of the Spotlight section at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.

Happening is being screened in the Spotlight section - 4 suns

Spotlight category is for films which have premiered at previous festivals and this film, Happening, took the Golden Lion Award at the 2021 Venice Film Festival.

In this excellent period piece, it is 1963 France and young Anne is on track to graduate with honors and be university bound when she discovers she is pregnant from her first sexual encounter. From there on, the film counts down in weeks as her fear and desperation grow. Anne is tricked by one doctor and told by another to "accept it - you have no choice." Anne feels she does have a choice even if those choices include possible death or going to prison.

The film is painful to watch on many levels. The piece became even more powerful for me, when I realized director Audrey Diwan had adapted the screen play from the memoir of Annie Ernaux. The author was young Anne whose dreams of being the first in her family to attend University and become a writer were on the line.

Anamaria Vartolomei who plays Anne is incredible in her first feature role. This was an interesting film to watch after seeing a documentary and a drama about The Jane Collective, a group of women activists who organized to help provide safe abortions for Chicago women in the late 60s and early 70s prior to the legalization of the process. It is important that no doctor, ever again, tell a woman "accept it - you have no choice," and that no woman ever has to risk her life with an illegal procedure.

Friday Film Reviewer & Monthly Book Reviewer