Happening
Past and present
In Happening (L’Événement, 2021), a young literature student named Anne (Anamaria Vartolomei) in 1960s France discovers she’s pregnant. The seriousness of this revelation cuts short any expectation that this film is a typical French coming-of-age film featuring a young woman. Her reaction is not the joy or panic of most cinematic pregnancies but something quieter and more terrifying: the realization that her life, as she knows it, is over. In a society where abortion is both illegal and unspeakable, Anne’s choices collapse into a single, dangerous path.
Director Audrey Diwan films this story with a moral clarity that feels closer to a documentary than a period drama. The camera stays uncomfortably close to Anne, trapping us in her point of view. There are no musical cues to soften her fear or to instruct us how to feel. Every frame is built to emphasize the suffocating lack of control women had over their own bodies, and how that control, or the loss of it, defines one’s future.
What makes Happening so effective is its refusal to dramatize the obvious. Diwan doesn’t sensationalize Anne’s ordeal; she simply shows what happens when society denies bodily autonomy. The film’s restraint is what makes it so devastating. When Anne seeks help, every encounter feels like a negotiation with shame: the doctor who refuses her, the friends who distance themselves, the man who disappears into comfort. Each scene becomes a study in isolation.
Vartolomei’s performance is outstanding. She plays Anne not as a symbol but as a person fighting through humiliation and exhaustion, her face caught between defiance and despair. By the film’s midpoint, her body itself becomes the narrative. It’s a site of revolt, of betrayal, of endurance. It’s no wonder that she’s found some success internationally, most recently in Mickey 17 (2025) as Kai Katz and in The Count of Monte Cristo (2024) as Haydée.
There’s nothing romantic about Happening. It’s a movie that makes you wonder who we are as a species. It doesn’t offer catharsis, only truth. Painful, painful truth. The film’s final moments are quiet, almost numb, and that’s the point: freedom, when earned through this much pain, doesn’t feel triumphant. It feels like survival.
Happening (L’Événement)
Written by Audrey Diwan and Marcia Romano; Directed by Audrey Diwan
2021
100 minutes
French
Recommended way to watch (at time of publication): Streaming on Kanoopy
You’ll like this if you like: 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007), Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020)