In the Pics section, film critic Floortje Smit casts her eye on contemporary visual culture.
The minutes feel endless. When Anne has finally found an ‘angelmaker’ who dares to help her in 1963 France (where termination of a pregnancy is punishable by prison), the procedure in L’événement is barely visible.
They are not allowed to make noise because of the neighbours. Movement is life-threatening. She has to endure all the fear and horrific, horrific pain in silence. And if the viewer – just like Anne – thinks he has gone through it, it turns out to be a failure.
L’evenement iIt’s one of those movies that is accidentally timed perfectly. The film, which won the Golden Lion in Venice, has been running in the Netherlands for a while and will premiere in the United States this week, precisely when abortion legislation there is suddenly under attack again.
Or is this not a coincidence? Is this a zeitgeist? Vanity Fair signaled a trend: According to Abortion Onscreen, an organization that tracks how often abortion plays a role on screen, 2020 was a record year. Also striking: the films over the past fifteen years have increasingly been about women and their search for someone to perform the abortion, not about sudden maternal feelings that make the procedure superfluous, or about male protagonists who try to prevent the woman in question from having her. will regret her decision for a lifetime.
And: the abortion is explicitly shown, if necessary in all its horror. In Titane by director Julia Ducournau, Alexia has been fiddling with a sharp pin for a long time to abort herself. ‘What I have in common with Julia Ducournau’, says l’evenementdirector Audrey Diwan, “is that we’re both talking about the anger we’re feeling right now.”
These kinds of scenes make abortion look a lot more barbaric than it needs to be today, emphasizes a scientist in Vanity Fair† But the danger isn’t the only thing that makes illegal abortion so terrible, shows l’evenement† What sets it apart from other abortion films – apart from that explicit scene – is the fact that Anne has no helping girlfriend(s) to make the misery somewhat bearable for the viewer. Different from the unwanted pregnant women in Never Rarely Sometimes Always† unpregnant† 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days or it to appear soon Call Jane† There is no safety net. Because anyone who helps could also end up in jail, everyone takes their hands off Anne. She is all alone in this.
That utter loneliness – that is inhuman horror that lingers even longer than those horrific scenes.