Critics reviews

Directing her second feature, Audrey Diwan demonstrates gifts that could open any number of doors in genre cinema... The casting alone shows flair. Who would have thought to cast Anna Mouglalis, hyper-glamorous model and actor, as a back-street abortionist?

A performance of astonishing isolation and intimacy from Anamaria Vartolomei anchors this inevitably harrowing but elegantly told French abortion drama.

I suppose the genre of this film is social realism, but in a just world this would be the most disturbing political dystopia imaginable.

None of this is gratuitous. Happening is a gripping, intense film, which proceeds with the same grim determination as its unsmiling heroine.

This is not a politically didactic film, nor a lapel-shaking polemic, but a film whose obligation towards fine dramatic authenticity succeeds in convincing that this is the correct way of thinking, and any alternatives are incorrect.

Happening is the admirable French drama from director and co-writer Audrey Diwan which won the Golden Lion at last year’s Venice film festival; it is an impeccably produced movie, faintly old-fashioned in its vehement emotional message, adapted from an autobiographical novel by Annie Ernaux.

Happening succeeds in not being a one-trick “abortion drama”, but its determination to evade cliché means that other things get lost. Diwan’s tightness of perspective affirms individual agency over collective solidarity.

In transferring Ernaux’s story to the screen, writer-director Audrey Diwan takes this aim with great seriousness, refusing to let us off the hook for a moment. There’s no visual shorthand. Searching close-ups and long, reflective takes ensure that we’re with Anna every step of the way,

Happening is not for the faint hearted: it goes further than Mike Leigh’s Vera Drake in depicting the realities of illegal abortion. But there’s respite in other more soothing details of Anne’s life... Diwan was BAFTA nominated for the film, and it was richly deserved, while Vartolomei makes a luminous heroine full of gritty determination. Their collaboration makes for an atmospheric, gripping drama with a poignant contemporary relevance.

Happening may be about abortion but ultimately it is about freedom – how the right to choose is central to humanity as well as a person's ability to define their own existence and carry out their life plan.

Deftly adapted by director Audrey Diwan from a novella, Happening is a period piece, but it’s acted and shot with a shivery immediacy.

There is barely a shot where Vartolomei is not in frame, and her performance – taut and sinuous and forceful – grounds Happening in the intimate trauma of patriarchal control.