The Venice Film Festival, the world’s oldest film festival, declared the French abortion drama Happening as winner of its prestigious Golden Lion on Saturday. The French film is set in 1963, stars Anamaria Vartolomei and Sandrine Bonnaire, and was directed by Audrey Diwan, who co-adapted the script with Marcia Romano and Anne Berest from Annie Ernaux’s 2000 autobiographical novel. Happening is Diwan’s second film.
In recent years, the top Venice winner has gone on to see significant box office and Oscar success. The previous four Golden Lions went to Nomadland, Joker, Roma, and The Shape of Water. (The streak comes to a halt with 2016’s nod to Filipino director Lav Diaz’s two-hour-and-forty-eight-minute The Woman Who Left, which didn’t reach similar heights of popularity.)
Happening was one of 21 films in the competition, and it beat out some of the buzzier contenders including Paul Schrader’s The Card Counter, Paolo Sorrentino’s The Hand of God, Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog, Pedro Almodóvar’s Parallel Mothers, Pablo Larraín’s Spencer, and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter.
“I did this movie with anger. I did the movie with desire also. I did it with my belly, my guts, my heart, my head,” Diwan said on Saturday, according to the Associated Press. “I wanted Happening to be an experience,” she added.
The Guardian called Happening a “serious, gripping and finally honourable film” and The Hollywood Reporter remarked that its “sensitive subject matter is illuminated by treatment that’s pithy and direct, often quite graphic and laced with precise details that put you very much in the environment of the time.” Screen International’s praise was a little more muted, noting a “slight lack of dramatic tension in much of the lead-up to its harrowing finale, with too much weight placed on the capable shoulders of the French-Romanian actress Anamaria Vartolomei.”
Happening marks the sixth movie directed by a woman to win the Golden Lion. Diwan’s film joins ranks with Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland, Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere, Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding, Agnès Varda’s Vagabond, and Margarethe Von Trotta’s Marianne & Juliane.
This year’s jury included Zhao, as well as director Bong Joon-ho, British actress and singer Cynthia Erivo, and Canadian actress Sarah Gadon, among others.
The Hand of God and The Power of the Dog won the second and third place prizes, Penélope Cruz won best actress for her role in Parallel Mothers, and John Arcilla won best actor for On the Job: The Missing 8, a Filipino crime drama. Gyllenhaal won best screenplay for The Lost Daughter.
But the real winner? Well, one could argue it was the Venice red carpet, which was host not only to the mesmerizing work of short cinema that was Oscar Isaac kissing Jessica Chastain’s arm but the official public debut of Hollywood’s finest reboot, Bennifer 2.0.
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