‘Happening’: Audrey Diwan’s Golden Lion Winner is a Stunning Achievement

French-Lebanese filmmaker Audrey Diwan’s sophomore feature won the top prize at Venice in September. Diwan and Marcia Romano adapted Annie Ernaux’s autobiographical novel, and the results are stunning. A minimalist vision of a France from not-too-long-ago when women’s rights were actually limited.

The film stars French-Romanian actress Anamaria Vartolomei as Anne, a university student in 1963 France who cannot seem to find her way in a sexist bureaucracy to terminate her pregnancy. This is an uncomfortable watch and all the more for the fact that Diwan refuses to hold back on the explicit details.

There’s a memorable scene where one of Anne’s friends teaches her how to masturbate with a pillow at their dorm room, she’s not sure what an orgasm is, but tells her to continue grinding on the pillow until she feels a release. The sexual revolution would be only a few years away, but it wouldn’t arrive on time for the main characters to break free from the social constraints, this is one moment when they do.

The French social-realism is accentuated by incredible period detail courtesy of production designer Dièné Bérété‘s luscious early ‘60s garb and the absorbing setting. However, it’s Vartolomei we remember most. The suffering in her eyes, the desperation in her tonal delivery, it’s the kind of breakout performance that could turn her into a major star.

The box aspect ratio Diwan uses here enhances the claustrophobic nature of Anne’s plight in such tense ways. There’s no time for speechifying in hers and Romano’s screenplay, she doesn’t judge anyone, just let’s the action play out, especially in the earth-shattering final 20 minutes. There aren’t many films where I was tempted to look away at the screen for a few seconds, but this one definitely has these moments.

The “abortion drama” is very much now an arthouse genre in itself, but only a handful of films have truly stuck out; “4 Months, 3 Weeks and Two Days,” “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” and “Vera Drake” are the essentials. You can add “Happening to that shortlist this instance. It’s a small-scaled masterwork.

IFC Films and FilmNation recently won the bidding war for the rights to distribute the film in the U.S. Expect a bow at Sundance in January and a first quarter release in 2022.