Venice Film Festival 'The Event' turns abortion into a harsh, feverish and extremely rigorous emotional and political testimony
The first thing that draws attention in
The Event
is the feeling of suffocation.
Long before being struck by the naturalness and honesty of raw images, by the certainty of pain, by the transparency of injustice, the viewer is directly imprisoned in the closed space of a square screen that barely allows the gaze to breathe.
“The idea,” reflects director
Audrey Diwan,
“is not to leave the audience with the guilty pleasure of watching.
It is not about looking, but about being the protagonist.
The one who looks discovers at the same time that the main character is behind a door and with it he travels the path of his anguish, his shame, his pain ».
Indeed, the camera follows the small body of the actress of Romanian origin.
Anamaria Vartolomei
and with her travel to the bottom of an abyss that suddenly seems shared.
It is drama with the suspenseful breath of a horror film;
it is a testimony, but above all it is a common experience, of all.
The film, fair winner of the
Golden Lion
in the last edition of Venice and which premieres these days, has become since its presentation a touchstone not so much of scandal as of revelation.
"My intention is not and has never been to argue," says the director with the same pedagogical desire that she already exhibited at the Lido last summer.
And she continues: “My idea is more of an offer.
Do you agree to share the experience and go through the same thing that a woman goes through in a society in which abortion is illegal? Is the question asked of the viewer.
Even if someone is blindly against abortion for religious reasons or for whatever reasons, in the end you have to face the fact that
prohibiting abortion is not avoiding abortion, it is condemning women to the slaughter of illegal abortion.
The event takes place in the first-person account of the writer
Annie Ernaux.
Set in 1963, the film plays on the regrets that always accompany contradictions.
On the one hand, a society, the French one, that suddenly opens up to a new world in which women can, on their own role, decide their future.
Anne, the main character, is young, studying at the university and for the first time owning her sexuality.
Everything in theory.
In practice, reality is there to demonstrate its proven effectiveness in defending certain privileges.
For that and to remind us that the consequences of freedom are basically paid by those who lack it.
“Talking about the past is the way to talk about the present.
Everything that is seen on the screen responds to a thought scheme that is still in force.
About abortion there is a veil of silence and in it we are educated.
I myself had an abortion
and when I traveled to Venice to present the film I asked myself if I had or could talk about it.
That's where I realized the mistake.
Anne's silence continues to be mine and that of so many more », she comments to explain not only the motivation but the plot of the film itself.
All of it is basically an exercise in clarity, in transparency;
a simple and elemental scream.
Diwan is clear despite everything that this is not a film against anyone.
It is not even intended to denounce the increasingly aggressive reaction embodied today by the growing extreme right.
«It is logical that men react to feminism because they are afraid of losing privileges.
Men have so far had the world to themselves.
They have been raised that way.
And we women have been to understand them, to agree with them.
I'm not judging them for it, I'm just trying to understand.
No one in the history of mankind has ever relinquished a privilege, no matter how small, without lamenting it or offering resistance," he says.
And the role of the
Metoo
in all this?
"The
Metoo
has been the equivalent of the end of
apartheid
."
It is clear.
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