When Audrey Diwan first started writing a script about abortion, people would ask her why. Adapting Annie Ernaux’s memoir about the author’s struggle to obtain an illegal abortion as a student in 1960s France, Diwan knew the story was important, but it was difficult to persuade others of its relevance. Fast forward a few years, and no one is asking why. When Happening premiered at the Venice film festival last year, critics were quick to draw connections between the plight of Anne (the character in the film) and the tightening of abortion restrictions around the world. As it lands in UK cinemas this week, this period piece feels timelier than ever.
Happening arrives on our screens at a fraught moment. In the US, Republicans are continuing a prolonged legislative assault on abortion as the supreme court waits to pass judgment on a case which could overturn Roe v Wade. In Europe, the debate around abortion access has been regalvanised by the pandemic, and last year Poland passed a near total ban, making it the sixth European country to impose severe restrictions. Elsewhere we’ve seen a swing in the opposite direction, with moves towards decriminalisation in Colombia, Argentina and Mexico. The overall effect of this push-pull is an atmosphere of intense instability as we face up to a new phase in the struggle for reproductive justice.
This sense of history in the making has filtered down to film-makers. When Happening screened at Sundance this January, it appeared alongside two other period films exploring the subject. Phyllis Nagy’s Call Jane follows a suburban housewife in 1960s Chicago called Joy who becomes a pro-choice activist after undergoing an illegal abortion, while Tia Lessin and Emma Pildes’s The Janes is a documentary about the real underground activists depicted in Nagy’s film. Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s recent Lingui, the Sacred Bonds, also follows a woman seeking an illegal abortion, this time in contemporary Chad. Back in the US the recent emergence of the “abortion road trip” sub-genre, sees films such as Eliza Hittman’s Never Rarely Sometimes Always and Rachel Lee Goldenberg’s Unpregnant address the impact of restrictive legislation on women’s lives.
Abortion is not a new topic for cinema – the first Hollywood feature to tackle the subject was released in 1916 – but the candid, explicitly political approach of this new wave of films feels revelatory. Historically Hollywood has either avoided the subject or relegated abortion storylines to moralistic subplots. There are some indie outliers – notably Alexander Payne’s satirical Citizen Ruth and Gillian Robespierre’s “abortion romcom” Obvious Child – but otherwise we’ve had to turn to the European arthouse and films like Agnès Varda’s One Sings, the Other Doesn’t and Cristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days for more nuanced, women-centred abortion stories. Happening is part of this tradition; Call Jane, in contrast, is a much more unlikely proposition: a solidly middlebrow yet unapologetically pro-choice mainstream American movie.
While this new crop of abortion films vary tonally, they are united by the immediacy of their message. Produced at a time of rapidly eroding rights, these films reflect the urgency of this context. Call Jane and Happening are both set in the past but share a fierce topicality. Although the film-makers offer different views of their period – Nagy takes the Mad Men route, with meticulous production design and dripping irony, while Diwan’s vision is raw, immediate and spare – they both draw the same conclusion: this is a live issue. “Establishing the story in the past tense could have given the feeling that the problem was solved,” Diwan tells me. “I wanted to point out the unfortunate permanence of this always contemporary problem.”
By re-creating a pre-decriminalisation era, Nagy and Diwan offer a clear warning of what we stand to lose. Films like Lingui, Never Rarely Sometimes Always and Unpregnant, however, remind us that for many the Bad Old Days are already here. For these directors, film-making is a form of activism. Haroun briefly served as a politician in Chad, but quit because he felt making films was a more effective way to influence policy, while Hittman has described Never Rarely Sometimes Always as her attempt to speak directly to “pig-headed, conservative men.” Unpregnant – a bawdy buddy movie about teens travelling from Missouri to Albuquerque for healthcare – couldn’t be more different tonally from Haroun or Hittman’s films, but Goldenberg has similar pragmatic purposes. Its use of comedy allows Unpregnant to connect with teens while also challenging stereotypes. “Putting abortion on a pedestal where the only way to feature it is in a depressing well of sadness is very anti-choice thinking,” says Goldenberg. “The comedy works as a critique; abortion shouldn’t be this fucking hard to access! And the situation has gotten so much worse since we made the film, it sadly feels more relevant than ever.”
One of the ways in which these films challenge anti-choice ideology is by portraying the procedure itself. Both Call Jane and Unpregnant feature sequences in which we are calmly talked through the process step by step, and Nagy even follows Joy’s procedure in real time. By contrast, Diwan graphically depicts the trauma of a secret abortion outside a medical setting. By keeping the camera running when most would cut away, these film-makers acknowledge a reality that has generally been hidden from view.
But perhaps these films’ most important triumph is to humanise an issue that is often discussed in ideological terms. Both Goldenberg and Diwan tell me that they were drawn to these projects after having abortions themselves. “When I got an abortion years ago, I told almost no one,” says Goldenberg. “Once I realised my own silence was adding to the stigma, I started talking about abortion to anyone and everyone – I wouldn’t shut up about it!” Diwan similarly saw making Happening as an opportunity to force an unspoken reality into view. “Shame invites everyone to silence,” says Diwan, “and this silence guarantees that nothing will change.”
One film is unlikely to turn a hardened pro-lifer but breaking the silence on this issue at least provides an opportunity for dialogue. When I ask Diwan how audiences have reacted to Happening on the festival circuit, she tells me that she has been heartened by how willing people have been to engage with the film’s politics. “Discussion always took precedence over confrontation,” says Diwan. “Many men expressed their surprise and were able to say simply: ‘I had no idea what a woman was going through at that time …’ I even debated with anti-abortionists stirred by the harshest scenes.”
By challenging misinformation and upending stigma, films such as Happening, Call Jane and Unpregnant bring new perspectives to an age-old debate. As we continue to navigate a tense moment for reproductive rights, we need all the help we can get; cinema probably can’t change the world, but perhaps it can at least change the conversation.
Happening is released on 22 April in UK cinemas.
