It may take place in 1963, the film The event is more topical in 2022 than the book of the same name was when it was released in 2000.
Posted yesterday at 8:30 a.m.
Annie Ernaux’s autobiographical drama, which director Audrey Diwan insisted on bringing to the screen, takes place in France. Anne, a young student, dreams of a career in literature and continuing her studies. Her world changes when she becomes pregnant. While abortion is illegal and dangerous, Anne wants to end her pregnancy at all costs.
A little parenthesis to start. While we have taken abortion for granted before, the right to end an unwanted pregnancy has never been so threatened in places. In Poland, abortion is virtually prohibited, while in the United States, the Supreme Court is considering laws in Texas and Mississippi which want to greatly reduce the period during which a woman can terminate a pregnancy.
Abortion rights also inspired director Marianne Farley for her short film frost, preselected in the list of finalists in its category at the Oscars, dystopia in which Quebec is under the sway of a sort of authoritarian regime that has once again criminalized abortion.
But back to the movie The eventwinner of the Golden Lion at Venice last year and which stars the formidable young Franco-Romanian actress Anamaria Vartolomei.
She brilliantly embodies her character, that of an introverted but determined young woman. When Anne becomes pregnant, it is clear in her mind that she does not want this fetus in her womb. As in Frostits only way out is clandestine.
Doctors can’t do anything for her. “You have to accept it. You have no choice,” the first one she consults tells her.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY MAISON 4:3
Sandrine Bonnaire plays Anne’s mother in The event.
Anne does not want the life of her parents who run a restaurant and who did not go to school for a long time. She will say insolently to her mother (played by Sandrine Bonnaire), worried about her grades: “What do you know about exams? »
With the story punctuated by the number of weeks of Anne’s pregnancy (in subtitles), we feel all the anguish and urgency experienced by her character in her race against time.
Resolutely intimate
Anamaria Vartolomei conveys how Anne is both ingenuous and convinced. The actress lived until the age of 2 in Romania, where abortion was a crime under communist rule. It was also at the heart of the film 4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days from Romanian filmmaker Cristian Mungiu, which won him the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2007.
In 4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days, a student tries to have an abortion with the precious help of her friend. Anne, she delays talking about her pregnancy to her close friends, so that The event is a resolutely intimate film. Anne lives her drama from within. She is alone with her distress and – without saying too much – she is ready to endure a lot of pain (as Annie Ernaux did, which is hard to imagine).
If the realization of Audrey Diwan turns out to be quite conservative, it is visceral since we live fully from the inside how Anne is panicked at the idea of giving birth.
The director opted for an artistic direction far from the aesthetics of period films, so that The event has a very current bill, which adds to its striking force.
On January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court of the United States recognized in its historic decision “Roe v. Wade” the right of American women to have an abortion. Hard to believe this is being questioned 50 years later in some states.
The event was also showcased recently at the Sundance festival, where the feature film was also presented Call Jane and the documentary The Janes (two works dedicated to a Chicago group that helped women have abortions in the 1960s). If so many films are released around the same subject, it is because the threat of a decline is very real.
Indoors
Drama
The event
Audrey Diwan
With Anamaria Vartolomei, Kacey Mottet Klein, Luàna Bajrami and Sandrine Bonnaire
1 h 40