IN Annie Ernauxbook from 2001 happens, the French literary icon known for her intensely personal writing, describes how a painting could depict her illegal abortion in 1963: “It would be a small table with a formica plate pushed up against a wall and an enamel basin with a probe “that glows on the surface. A little to the right – a hairbrush.” But, she continues, such depictions simply do not exist. “I do not think there is a single museum in the world whose collections contain a work called The study of abortion.”
Then as now, artistic representations of abortion are far too rare, especially given how often the procedure occurs. Nearly one in four American women will undergo an abortion when they are 45 years old. Yet only 169 films released between 1913 and 2012 showed abortion as an important plot or included an abortion provider as the protagonist, according to a 2014 study. For many, the 1987s Sexy dance was the first cinematic production of abortion they encountered. Since then (and long before), films have addressed the subject in countless ways from the perspective of a secret provider (2004’s devastating period drama Vera Drake) to hardly pronounced (Made pregnant‘s shmashmortion in 2007) and as a dramatic denouement (2008’s Revolutionary path).
But by 2020, most films with abortion plotlines premiered to date, according to Abort Onscreen, a UCSF program that tracks depictions of abortion in movies and television that are available to the American audience. And only in the last 15 years have film narratives focused on one’s performance of the procedure, as in 2007’s 4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days; 2015s Grandmother; 2018s Little Forest; and 2020’s neorealist odyssey Never Rarely Sometimes Always and roadtrip buddy comedy Ugravid.
A shocking new French film in the subgenre heralds a step towards cinematic depictions of abortion that are more graphic than ever before, as filmmakers react strongly to intensified threats to access to abortion. While the public can gasp, advocates of abortion praise these visceral depictions for pulling back the curtain on the dangerous ordeal of illegal dismissals, even though scientific advances have actually made these procedures far less dangerous – even the so-called illegal ones.
It is a question that has gained new relevance after a draft opinion from the Supreme Court was leaked on Monday, suggesting that the court has voted to crack down on the distinction. Roe v. Wade decision. The leaked draft calls abortion “extremely wrong from the start” and argues that there is no constitutional right to an abortion. If the court ends up issuing it or something similar, such an opinion would allow states to ban or strictly restrict abortion, as many have actually been preparing to do for several months.
Based on Ernaux’s book, Audrey Diwan‘s happens follows Anne, a promising student in France in 1963, who confronts legal, social, and corporal barriers in her increasingly desperate quest to terminate her pregnancy. The gripping film received The Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2021, in addition to the BAFTA and César nominations, and has so far been met with universal criticism. Although the film takes place in the past, “unfortunately, it’s always a reality,” Diwan says, referring to the new wave of U.S. abortion restrictions.
Diwan discovered Ernaux’s book after her own abortion, attracted to what she calls an “intimate thriller” that takes place in a body’s race against time. “My goal was not to see Anne, but to try to be her,” the director emphasizes, and the film binds the viewer to the protagonist by focusing on Anne’s abbreviated breathing and compressing her in the image with an almost square image format instead of the more common wide . -screen.
All of this allows the film’s more graphic sequences to land heavily; Blue Valentine‘s two breaking minutes on the clinic table, no light clock in 2010, seems distinctive in comparison. Diwan admits that happens limits to body horror, perhaps not surprising to one who found Kampklub and Requiem for a dream forming. “I love telling stories through the body,” she notes.
A scene in happens echoes a memorable moment from last year Titanium, of the body-horror impresario Julia Ducournau: a self-induced abortion attempt involving a hairpin. “I think we have something in common,” Diwan said of his countryman. “We’re both talking about the anger and rage we’re feeling right now.” After all, she points out, what women in France experienced 60 years ago is, unfortunately, still the reality for so many women around the world today. (Sixty-six countries, where just over a quarter of women of childbearing age live, either ban abortion or allow it only if a woman’s life is in danger.)