Happening (France: Audrey Diwan, 2021)

 Happening (France: Audrey Diwan, 2021: 100 mins)

Blackhurst, Alice. "On Audrey Diwan’s ‘Happening’ (‘L’événement’)." Another Gaze (April 19, 2022) ["Hearing about a new film adaptation of an Annie Ernaux book always makes me nervous. Her texts are so committed to the act of writing itself, what only writing can reveal, that to translate them into images carries risks of misfire. Pairing intimate, personal details with devices from more sociological or anthropological traditions (lists, observations, cataloguing, collation), her work presents sizeable challenges to adaptation. In the case of L’événement (literally, ‘The Event’, translated as Happening for both book and film versions), the text Ernaux wrote in 2000 about the illegal abortion she had as a student in France in the sixties, the imperative is not so much to “tell the story” of an unwanted pregnancy as to, years later, achieve neutral distance from it via the deliberate and retrospective process of prose composition. It is about saying – to make use of the English title – that yes, this happened, but that the flow of reflections and sense-memories inspired by its writing might in the end be more interesting than the procedure itself."]

Cotton, Jess. "Happening Is an Abortion Story About Working-Class Women." Jacobin (May 25, 2022)

Diwan, Audrey and Anamaria Vartolomei. "On Happening." Film at Lincoln Center Podcast #396 (May 2022) ["Winner of the Venice International Film Festival’s prestigious Golden Lion, Audrey Diwan’s exceptionally well-observed breakthrough is an unsparing, gripping portrait of a young woman’s attempts to secure an illegal abortion in 1960s France. A student of ambition and promise, hoping to leave her small town and embark on a professional life of the mind, Anne Duchesne (Anamaria Vartolomei in a brave, overwhelming performance) finds her entire future thrown into doubt upon discovering that she’s pregnant. Sure to be one of the most talked-about movies of the year, Happening, based on the semi-autobiographical novel by acclaimed author Annie Ernaux, is a drama that incrementally builds in power, showing the step-by-step process by which an ordinary young woman attempts to establish her freedom and ownership of her body."]

Eggert, Brian. "Happening (2022)." Deep Focus Review (May 11, 2022)

Haas, Lidija. "In Happening, Unwanted Pregnancy Derails a Life." The New Republic (May 12, 2022)

Ide, Wendy. "Happening director Audrey Diwan on confronting abortion taboos." Financial Times (April 16, 2022)

Laffly, Tomris. "Happening." Roger Ebert (May 6, 2022) 

Lane, Anthony. "Happening and the Solitary Woe of An Illegal Abortion." The New Yorker (May 16, 2022)

Marso, Lori. "Feeling Like a Feminist with Audrey Diwan’s Happening." Los Angeles Review of Books (June 30, 2022) ["

Scherffig, Clara Miranda. "Interview: Audrey Diwan’s Happening." Screen Slate (May 3, 2022)