SPOTLIGHT FILM REVIEW
Happening
(2021)
A Woman’s Choices When She Has No Choice
Written by Joy Udoh, AMSA Reproductive Health Fellow
I hosted a movie night for some of my medical friends last fall. After viewing a few trailers, we settled on Happening (2021). I think the choice was unanimous because of how charged the story it promised to depict was to us. Happening is a film adaptation of a memoir by renowned French writer, Annie Ernaux. It is about her experience as a young student in the 1960s who finds herself pregnant in a France where abortions are illegal. Given the circumstances surrounding the pregnancy, Anne does not want to keep the fetus and will risk her life to protect her future.
Despite the film’s retro feel and the stylistic markers of the sixties, Anne’s story has a strong contemporary energy that is at once bone-chilling and captivating. It explores the question of the lengths a woman is willing to go to stop a pregnancy from progressing to term. This film easily comes to mind as I process and witness the legal, moral and ideological contestation of abortion care in the United States. How would Anne have navigated a state with a total abortion ban? Or one with a six-week ban? Who would she have reached out to for support if her entire community was conservative and pro-life? What would it look like for an underground network to re-emerge as the most reliable way to seek abortion care? There was a point at which these questions would have felt dystopian but they are as ever a reality now as they were in her French town during the 1960s. If you’re looking for a study break or good film to watch this weekend, I could not recommend Happening more highly.
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If you are interested in writing a film or book review email rhp@amsa.org
*Note: an excerpt of this Spotlight is included in AMSA Reproductive Health Project eNews
#33: Building Community, Connecting Human Rights & Repro Justice, Dec 7 2024
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