Last night I finally caught Audrey Diwan’s Happening, which is easily the most sobering, harrowing and artful abortion drama I’ve seen since Cristian Mungiu‘s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, which premiered at Cannes almost exactly 15 years ago.

Happening premiered at the 2021 Venice Film Festival (where it won the Golden Lion), but IFC Films didn’t open it theatrically until last month with streaming set to launch on 6.21. So it’s shooting right to the top of HE’s best of 2022 list.

I wouldn’t call Happening a “horror film,” but in its plain, frank and unfettered way it comes close to that. Honestly? The conservative wing of the Supreme Court should watch it before rendering their final positions on Roe vs. Wade.

Based on Annie Ernaux’s 2011 memoir and set in a small French town in 1963, or 12 years before abortion was finally legalized in that country, it’s about Anne (Anamaria Vartolomei), a bright 23 year-old college student who finds herself unwelcomely knocked up. “I’d like a child one day,” she tells one of the doctors she goes to, “but not instead of a life.” She wants agency, to possibly write — a woman at least a decade ahead of her time.

The film is about Anne’s agonizing attempts to terminate, and I’m telling you right now what she and the audience go through together at times is not easy to sit through. Three scenes are especially tough. We’re talking graphic, “God, this is awful”, avert-your-eyes stuff.

But it’s the honest truth, and given the film’s low-key, straight-up directness and uncomfortable naturalism there’s no way to respond except with admiration and awe.

The film lasts 100 minutes, and there’s not a single moment that feels theatrical or manipulative or over-cooked.

Vartolomei, 24, doesn’t “play” Anne as much as submit to the reality of the story — she’s just there, quietly alarmed, trying to figure it out, guarded, persistent and going through hell.

In his 5.12.22 review, Newsday‘s Rafer Guzman wrote something very strange: “Whether you condone this film or condemn it, Happening presents a brutal reality.” Condemn it? Who the hell would condemn an honest account of what a young pregnant woman went through 60 years ago? Pro-life fanatics, I suppose, but God.

HE to critic friendo: “Happening is drop-dead brilliant — the best anguish-of-women film since 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. Have you seen it?

Friendo to HE: “Haven’t yet, will check it out.”

HE to friendo: “I can understand a woman who’s been through an abortion not wanting to see this. A friend has never seen 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days for this reason. I said to her that 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days “is not an ‘abortion film’ — it’s a Cristian Mungiu film.’”

Friendo to HE: “But it’s totally an abortion film. I think 4 Months is an unassailable work of cinema, although I found it painful to watch and, truth to tell, a touch arduous, though I don’t deny that it’s superbly done. If you look at the box office grosses for Happening, you’ll see it’s not a film that even what’s left of the art-house audience has much interest in seeing.”

HE to friendo: “But it’s a forecast of what’s to come after Roe is trashed.”

Friendo to HE: “I think that political issue transcends movies. Frankly, I have not seen a drama about abortion that truly confronts what I think is the most complicated factor in the issue: how much certain women are haunted by having abortions, and in any number of cases regret it.”

Another, very human side of Tom Hanks…understood, sympathized with, HE-approved.

Tom Hanks momentarily, and understandably, loses his nice guy persona as over eager fans practically knock over his wife Rita Wilson. pic.twitter.com/vS2xfCqOIO

— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) June 16, 2022

Last Saturday (6.11) marked the 40th anniversary of Steven Spielberg‘s E.T., The Extra-Terrestrial. It opened exactly one week after Poltergeist (6.4), which was partly directed by the late Tobe Hooper but mostly directed (or certainly overseen) by Spielberg.

E.T. and Poltergeist each cost roughly $10.5 million to make. Both were hugely successful, but E.T. left a much bigger box-office footprint with a grand total to date of $792 million. Poltergeist wound up earning $121.7 million.

I was the managing editor of The Film Journal at the time, and I distinctly recall that the promotional build-up for Poltergeist (“the beast!”, ghosts seeping out from Native American burial grounds, little girl sucked into a television) was louder than the E.T. drumbeat.

When the first E.T. screening happened I sent a stringer (Mark Kane, who went on to become a hotshot L.A. attorney) to cover it rather than see it myself. When Kane returned to the office later that day he had this funny little grin on his face. He didn’t say “this movie is going to make box-office history” or “it brought tears to me eyes” or anything like that, but he was definitely charmed.

Bottom line: There wasn’t much advance hoopla for E.T. The pre-screening buzz was that it was a “little movie” — a film that was basically about kids and divorce and suburbia and so on. There were no mentions of a toy-sized, big-eyed alien living in the closet of a little boy’s bedroom, etc. E.T.‘s p.r. materials were very restrained and neutral-sounding.

And then it opened and within a week or two everyone was saying “holy shit…how many times have you seen it?…I have to take my kids.”

The E.T. vibe before it opened (i.e., when it was just screening for Manhattan journos) was very cool and contact-high. I was in love with it. I saw it three times before it opened. And then it opened and the unwashed masses poured into theatres and it was suddenly less of a cool thing.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to name other big hits that nobody saw coming…movies that no one expected anything stupendous from in terms of emotional content or box-office revenue but wound up surprising the handicappers.

Okay, I’ll name one — Ted Kotcheff‘s First Blood. Early buzz was flat, just another Stallone flick, a difficult production history, a re-shot ending, mixed reviews, etc. But it wound up earning a gross of either $125 or $156 million (serious money back in ’82) and of course launched a franchise.

None of the Rambo sequels have been as good as the original.

So Andrew Dominik‘s Blonde (Netflix, 9.23) was primarily shot in black-and-white (which I love) and at times within a 1.37 aspect ratio. But not entirely. Occasional color sequences used for…what, replicating sequences from her color films?

HE theory: The black-and-white conveys the sad and vulnerable stuff, the widescreen black-and-white is used for public appearances, and color pops in every so often for snippets of Niagara, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, River of No Return, The Seven-Year Itch, The Prince and the Showgirl, Let’s Make Love, etc.

Marilyn Monroe‘s best films were in black-and white, of course — The Asphalt Jungle, All About Eve, Clash By Night, Don’t Bother to Knock, Some Like It Hot, The Misfits.

From Ben Dalton’s Dominik interview in 2.12.22 Screen International: “In summer 2021, reports emerged that Netflix was unhappy with the more controversial aspects of the film, including a scene featuring bloody menstrual oral sex. ‘That’s not true!’ laughs Dominik, who describes the claim as ‘hilarious’.

“Dominik does confirm, though, that a rape scene in Joyce Carol Oates’ book appears in the film. There was a back-and-forth with the streamer — which has yet to comment on the situation — about what was acceptable to include.

“‘It’s controversial, there’s a bit for [Netflix] to swallow,’ says Dominik. ‘It’s a demanding movie — it is what it is, it says what it says. And if the audience doesn’t like it, that’s the fucking audience’s problem. It’s not running for public office.’”

Jordan Ruimy is reporting (and Netflix has confirmed) that Blonde‘s running time is 166 minutes.

I’m presuming that Blonde will screen at both the Venice and Telluride festivals, which will kick off, respectively, on 8.31 and 9.2.

My immediate reaction: “Village People alternate circa 1979.”

This absurd TikTok fantasy reminds me of an actual, real-life infidelity episode. Or so I was told by a friend of Gerry Seitz, a Connecticut guy I knew and palled around with way back when. Gerry didn’t pass it along first-hand, but I believed the story then and I believe it now. (Partly because I want to believe it, I suppose.). True or false, I’ve never forgotten it.

It happened in the early to mid ’70s, somewhere in Southern Florida (Ft. Lauderdale, Hollywood, Boca Raton). A college grad, Seitz was working part-time in construction, and he was having an affair with the extremely hot wife of a co-worker (or a friend of a co-worker, something like that).

No dates, no motel assignations — Gerry would occasionally visit the unemployed wife at home around lunch hour or the early afternoon, and then, just to be safe, skedaddle around 3 or 4 pm. Hubby was usually home by 6 or 6:30 pm.

You know how this goes. Gerry and the wife were in bed around 3 pm when they heard the sound of a car outside, the jingle of keys, the front door opening, etc. It happened too quickly for Gerry to manage an escape. He tossed his clothes and footwear under the bed and slipped buck naked into the bedroom closet.

The husband walks in, a bit surprised to find his wife under the covers with (what is that?) a certain aroma in the air. She says something about wanting to take a shower or a sudden urge to take a nap…whatever comes to mind. Turned-on hubby gets flirty and handsy and takes off his T-shirt. The guilt-stricken wife feels she has no choice but to respond.

Gerry, listening from the closet, is quietly freaking. He figures it would have been one thing if the husband had walked in on him and the wife — an alarming trauma that probably would have turned violent. But the husband’s reaction would be much more ferocious, Gerry was imagining, if he discovers Gerry in the closet after he and the wife have had sex. The guy might shoot him if that happens.

Gerry is weighing the odds, sweating it out and struggling to stay as silent as possible. Before the husband and wife start to actually do it, Gerry decides he can’t stand the tension and opens the closet door and announces himself, dangling schlong and all…”I’m really sorry and I’m leaving.” Husband freaks, strong words, slaps and fisticuffs. But at least Gerry didn’t get shot.

Posted on 12.24.17: Remember those dim-bulb Academy members who harangued Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio after that first Wolf of Wall Street Academy screening because they didn’t get the satirical thrust behind all the coarse vulgarity (which was delivered both literally and within “quotes”)? And how Scorsese and DiCaprio had to attend screening after screening and patiently explain that they were depicting the louche adventures of Jordan Belfort and his cronies to make a point about the character of the buccaneers who have fleeced this country and will definitely fleece again? Remember the brief shining moment of Hope Holiday