Saint Frances

 

Alex Thompson and Kelly O'Sullivan

banner from 1977 National Women's Conference

Ramona Edith Williams on the set

SAINT FRANCES                 B+                                                                                                USA  (101 mi)  2019  d: Alex Thompson

As women’s movies go, there is nothing about this overtly personal film that would ever have been written by a man, as this is a brave approach to feminist cinema on a small scale, like an open conversation with other women, accentuating the importance of women’s bodies and not having to feel ashamed, bringing a singularly unique perspective that is eye-opening, to say the least, offering a melancholy expression of modern life, dealing with the subject of abortion in unexpected ways, expressing the severe toll it takes on a woman’s body, while even a sympathetic male supporter undergoes no similar transformation, having no real idea or understanding of what a woman actually goes through.  Unlike other films that deal with the subject substantially differently, like Yasujirō Ozu’s Tokyo Twilight (Tôkyô Boshoku) (1957), Cristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (4 luni, 3 saptamâni si 2 zile) (2007), Nia DaCosta’s Little Woods (2018), Eliza Hittman’s 2020 Top Ten List #5 Never Rarely Sometimes Always, or Audrey Diwan’s 2023 Top Ten List #10 Happening (L’événement) (2021), the latter three made by women, this film balances the extremes of copious amounts of blood on the sheets after sex during menstruation with all the psychological ramifications of the ensuing consequences.  Women are intentionally kept ignorant about their own bodies and manipulated by a culture that expects their lives to conform to the approved narrative, reflective of all the ways society dictates how women should feel about themselves, where obtaining truths about certain realities can be hard to come by.  The prevailing sentiment is that if men got pregnant, abortion would be legal everywhere, as easily accessible as ATM machines.  Instead, the United States Supreme Court ruled in June 2022 that there is no constitutional right to abortion, overturning Roe v. Wade (1973), which guaranteed a constitutional right, a devastating decision that will reverberate for generations to come, now making it as difficult as possible, even outlawing abortion in most places of the country, making it against the law to even provide common sense knowledge and helpful information to women.  It’s a contentious subject that has divided the nation for decades, but abortions are an existing reality in America, with more than 20 million occurring in the last 20 years, yet 82% of both men and women don’t know where to go for after-abortion support.  That amounts to 16 million people who didn’t know where to find care, and that’s when Roe v. Wade was legal, so that number would be substantially higher today, where many women who have had an abortion turn to alcohol or drugs as tranquilizers to numb their painful memories.  No statistics are mentioned in the film, and this is not some kind of moral or social crusade, remaining completely non-judgmental at every turn, instead it’s simply a refreshingly honest take in its portrayal of female life, on what makes women biologically and psychologically different than men, where the drama is presented in a very matter of fact way, becoming a deeply empathetic film about the collective struggles that all women face and the power that comes with sharing them.  It’s rare to discover a film where the menstrual cycle is presented as an everyday, ordinary occurrence, where it’s not shocking or disgusting, but just how bodies work, often showing up at the most inopportune moments, something to contend with on a regular basis, with a wide variety of accompanying mood swings, yet it’s something women at an early age are taught to hide and keep concealed, where most women have an embarrassing period story.  In other words, this frank depiction of modern womanhood is far more complex than most of us truly know or understand, becoming a film about female sexual autonomy, the kind of rights that are being stripped from women today, yet showing a willingness to tackle big topics with disarming candor, where this essentially low-key film shines a light in the dark, offering unapologetic insight into a difficult subject, yet does so with extensive warmth and humor.

While the film is heavily female in tone and content, offering a perspective on both having a child and choosing not to, one unexpected surprise is that it’s actually directed by a man, Alex Thompson, who is also the editor, yet written by and starring his partner Kelly O’Sullivan as Bridget, a 34-year old woman that we see at a party in the opening, where she meets Jace (Max Lipchitz), ending up together in bed (in the actor’s own Uptown apartment in Chicago), where the unthinkable happens, as the sheets are covered in blood afterwards.  OK, she started menstruating during sex, not that big of a deal, but the blood motif is a sign of things to come, as she later gets pregnant and decides to terminate the pregnancy at home taking prescribed pills.  And while the much younger Jace is totally on board and supportive of her choice, the film shows a clear delineation between what they each experience.  It’s kind of cute, at first, how they act like a couple without really being a couple, something she makes unequivocally clear from the outset when Jace incorrectly assumes that he’s her boyfriend.  He does accompany her to the clinic, and tenderly reads her the precise instructions to follow afterwards, and while he may be politely supportive, she resents the fact that it’s her body alone that must suffer, as she loses copious amounts of blood, spending a great deal of time in the bathroom, as intermittent bleeding is a common aftereffect following an abortion, where it’s all a bit unsettling.  Yet there’s a breezy air about this woman, quick-witted and smart, easy to like, expressing an inherent decency, using dark humor to cover her anxieties, often making jokes at her own expense, exposing her own vulnerability, reminding some of the restless spirit of Greta Gerwig in Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha (2012), yet she’s not without flaws, describing herself as “not an impressive person,” but somehow the overall tone is humorous and invigorating.  Audiences are invited into this strange new world, as it’s not something typically seen in movies, where the entire film is filtered through her eyes, working a frustrating job as a server at an American diner restaurant that she abruptly quits for a new summer job as a nanny for a biracial lesbian couple, who have two young children living near Northwestern University in a middle class suburb just north of Chicago, essentially so that the two mothers can look after their newborn.  While she never thought she’d be offered the job, not exactly acing the interview, the original hire did not work out, so she fills a need as the sensible choice, probably way overqualified, but has no real experience working with children.  In fact, she doesn’t even like children.  Not much is known about her initially, with viewers learning details much like her perspective employer does, and there’s not instant rapport with the children, as six-year old Frances (Ramona Edith Williams, who is a true revelation onscreen) gives her a hard time, bluntly informing her “You’re not good at anything,” instantly challenging the acceptable boundaries, feigning that she’s being abducted by a stranger, so when the police return them both to the door after a routine visit to the park, the mothers are predictably concerned, but they know their precocious daughter, who is smart beyond her years, a reflection of her mixed-race parents, Maya (Charin Alvarez), a practicing Catholic who is the nurturer and provider of the newborn, and Annie (Lily Mojekwu), a strong-willed lawyer working long hours who is more intellectually demanding.  No one is without sin in this film, which becomes universally relatable to the mainstream, even if the specific circumstances faced by the protagonist are completely unfamiliar, shockingly made for less than $150,000 and winning the Audience Choice Award at the 2019 SXSW Film Festival.  The film’s biggest weakness is depicting men exclusively as disappearing characters who hardly matter, while it’s also laced with a wistful, indie-heavy musical score that’s just not that interesting, sounding overly bland and generic.

One of the few films to stand out during a Covid pandemic lockdown, the dialogue is sharply written and candidly honest, perceptively dealing with unpleasant subjects or treading into often forbidden territory with down-to-earth humor, which makes this a rare film in that regard alone.  But the film really takes off as Bridget and Frances start to warm to each other, as the back and forth between them leads to some really touching moments, becoming amusingly playful and heartfelt, like having a longtime sidekick, knowing they are friends and allies, worthy of trust, and most of all safe companions.  The film is unusually charming in the breadth of their extraordinary honesty, with this young child stealing every scene she’s in, a remarkable contrast to the acute psychological stress from the lingering effects of the abortion, which is equally stunning in its transparency.  Bridget appears to be aimlessly stuck in a mid-life crisis, “an agnostic feminist” no longer connected to her lapsed Catholicism, where abortion remains a mortal sin, but retains an inherently old-fashioned adherence to the rhythm method of contraception, not really discovering her true purpose in life. Having achieved nothing of what is generally understood as a success, this brief introduction to motherhood has caused her to reassess her situation, as all her friends from school have gone on to either be super successful or married with children.  But she defiantly refuses to be defined by others, including her own disappointed parents, where her rather bossy mother (Mary Beth Fisher, a frequent collaborator of the Goodman Theater in Chicago) offers a lurid story of her own travails with early motherhood, where parenthood often feels like simply too much to handle, suggesting it’s always important to have someone to talk to so you don’t feel so isolated and alone, which allows for the possibility of growth.  One of the scenes of the film takes place on a playground, with Maya breastfeeding a young newborn, which offends one of the other mothers, offering a piece of her mind, attempting to guilt-trip her, with Bridget stepping in to defend a woman’s right to feed her own child, as that’s one of the wonders of nature that should never be judged as “offensive.”  Fraught with emotion, it’s like a provocative scene out of Todd Field’s Little Children (2006), where women are often meanest to other women, for some reason, and can be the patriarchy’s best enforcers, where a similar incident happens again when Frances is having a play date with another child, and the mother (Rebekah Ward), recognizes Bridget from a year spent together at Northwestern, when Bridget was thought of as “the next Sylvia Plath,” but after she realizes she’s just a lowly nanny, she starts ordering her around like a servant, reflective of pervasive class bigotry.  There are equally compelling scenes of Bridget dressing up Frances as a budding Joan Jett rock star, complete with playful anger and a badass attitude, where the bond they share is positively uplifting, but of course once Annie returns home she wipes off all the makeup and sends her daughter off to her room, as if she’s being punished for something.  There are plenty of contrasting moments or divergent points of view, including the lesbian relationship, which has its own issues, with Maya feeling overwhelmed, suffering from postpartum depression, worrying that she’s failed as a parent, not receiving enough support from her partner, who is in denial about what her partner is going through, but what really works is the evolution of these relationships, as we come to know these characters, who are so carefully drawn out as to become completely recognizable.  Frances is like a child savant, whose poignant reflections are astonishing, ultimately providing the saving grace, as her openness appears to be a healing bridge to all Bridget’s concerns, as she’s so essentially human that she resuscitates the sagging life force within her, allowing her to breathe again and just be herself, as mattering to someone is what matters.      

2023 Top Ten List #10 Happening (L’événement)

 

Director Audrey Diwan

Diwan with actress Anamaria Vartolomei

novelist Annie Ernaux in her youth

Annie Ernaux today

HAPPENING (L’événement)         B+                                                                                        France  (100 mi)  2021  d: Audrey Diwan

I have no idea which words will come to me.  I have no idea where my writing will take me.  I would like to stall this moment and remain in a state of expectancy.  Maybe I’m afraid that the act of writing will shatter this vision, just like sexual fantasies fade as soon as we have climaxed.       — Annie Ernaux, awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature, from her 2000 novel Happening (L’événement), Happening - Page 57 - Google Books Result

An autobiographical memory piece, a searing social drama with a riveting script and feminist sense of urgency, adapted by Diwan and Marcia Romano from the 2000 novel by the same name from Annie Ernaux, author of more than twenty works of fiction and memoir, considered by many to be France’s most important writer, awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature a year after this film was released “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory.”  A blisteringly intense look back at the early 60’s when the pill did not exist and abortion was still a crime in France, a leftover relic from the Vichy government twenty years after the death of Marie-Louise Giraud, a woman guillotined for practicing abortion (France executed abortionist Marie-Louise Giraud by guillotine.), this is an era of stolen youth, recalling the harrowing journey of a young woman whose path was riddled by Kafkaesque authoritative obstacles that left her on the brink of death.  Historical and frighteningly topical, recounted with uncanny accuracy, the film documents one woman’s indefatigable quest for an illegal abortion in order to pursue her academic studies, with the author emphasizing the horrid physicality and undercurrent of violence in the law, “If I don’t relate this experience in detail, I am helping to obscure the reality of women’s lives and making myself an accomplice to male domination of the world.”  In a few short years, the chants on the streets of Paris would be “Egalité!  Liberte!  Sexualité!” (Egalité! Liberté! Sexualité!: Paris, May 1968 | The Independent).  Very early in her career, Ernaux turned away from fiction to focus on autobiography, as this account was written forty years later, still traumatized by the event, sifting through memories and journal entries, providing clarity to the complicated, writing about things that are impossible to speak about, yet that era of impossibility has been thrust into the future of young women in America with the Supreme Court overturning freedom of choice in June 2022, with Oregon Governor Kate Brown announcing in response, “You cannot ban abortion.  You can only ban safe abortions.” (Oregon political leaders react to end of Roe v. Wade - OPB).  Under a new wave of conservatism, abortion has again become one of the main subjects of passionate ideological controversies in the western democracies, as women’s bodies are once again threatened by the unspeakable power a man and a regressive society can hold over a woman.  Removing safe access to legal abortions leaves only unsafe avenues to pursue, typically with no anaesthetic, a sticky path no one wants to take, where it’s important to note that worldwide, even today, 68,000 women die of unsafe abortion every year, while 5 million more will suffer long-term health complications.  Recalling similar films addressing the same issue, Agnès Varda’s ONE SINGS, THE OTHER DOESN’T (1976), Claude Chabrol’s THE STORY OF WOMEN (1988), Mike Leigh’s VERA DRAKE (2004), Cristian Mungiu’s  4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (4 luni, 3 saptamâni si 2 zile) (2007), Eliza Hittman’s 2020 Top Ten List #5 Never Rarely Sometimes Always, and Mahamat Saleh Haroun’s LINGUI, THE SACRED BONDS (2021), this may be the most subjectively brutalizing.  As opposed to the other abortion dramas, this one is actually about the plight of women, made in close consultation with the author, elevated by the relentlessly personal performance of French-Romanian actress Anamaria Vartolomei who is in nearly every frame of the film, which unanimously won the Golden Lion (1st Place) at the 2021 Venice Film Festival, while Vartolomei won the César Award for Most Promising Actress.  Yet it’s the appearance of French actress Sandrine Bonnaire as her mother that really surprises, breaking into the industry at the age of 16 with her explosive debut in Maurice Pialat’s À Nos Amours (To Our Loves) (1983), also winning the César Award for Most Promising Actress, a film Diwan told her actors to watch before filming began, along with Andrea Arnold’s FISH TANK (2009).  Bonnaire also worked with Agnès Varda in Vagabond (Sans toit ni loi) (1985), one of her most defiantly bold roles, a woman hitchhiking alone through a cold wintry landscape, as this film similarly captures the bleak emptiness of a woman’s journey through a different kind of winter wasteland, one that exists in the chilly bastion of middle class privilege where sought-after freedoms are supposedly the hallmark of a cultured and civilized French society, yet under the veneer of promised hope, undeniable horrors abound like dirty little secrets, with the professor offering a nationalist, patriotic reference before the taking of university final exams, “I hope these words by Victor Hugo will show you the way, dear students.”    

We shall keep the honor.
The rest, we shall give away.
And we walk.
Our eyes, indignant.
Our foreheads, pale.
On them, we read: Faith, courage, drought.
The troops continue their route. 
Heads high, raising their flag, 
holy rags.

In 1963, Anne Duchesne (Ernaux’s maiden name) is a promising French student in Angoulême on the verge of taking her university final exams (the same town where Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch was filmed), yet in the areas outside Paris especially, the country remains deeply conservative and Catholic, existing under a lens of misogyny and shame, where it wasn’t until the Veil Act of 1975, two years after the United States, seven years after Great Britain, and almost 50 years after Sweden, that France finally legalized abortion, a word that is never mentioned in the book or the film.  Anne’s life as a university student is relatively carefree, living in a woman’s dormitory with shared showers and meals in a cafeteria, with young women getting their first taste of freedom away from home, exuding a sense of liberated confidence, with Anne exceling at school, where her tastes and interests are typical of a young woman in the 60’s, a reader of Sartre, Beauvoir, Aragon, and Kafka, with a promising future as a literary professor, though it later changes to becoming a writer.  Lying on the beach in the company of her friends Hélène (Luàna Bajrami) and Brigitte (Louise Orry-Diquéro), they exude in the summertime bliss of Éric Rohmer’s PAULINE AT THE BEACH (1983) or A Summer's Tale (Conte d'été) (1996), where youthful characters playfully obsess over romantic relationships and soak in the world around them with a kind of innocent curiosity, as if they’ll never grow old, all but certain that a bright future awaits them (made possible by the widespread availability of contraception), while Rohmer’s BOYFRIENDS AND GIRLFRIENDS (1987) actually takes place in Ernaux’s home town of Cergy-Pontoise.  Veering away from the established template, however, Diwan shows Anne checking her underwear for blood, as her period is five weeks late, something altogether unimaginable in a young girl’s life, and when a local doctor determines she’s pregnant, she goes into an emotional tailspin with her world suddenly turned upside down, her hopes and dreams evaporating, as she embarks on a lonely struggle that is as painful as it is intimate.  “Time was no longer a series of days that had to be filled with lessons and papers, but had become the formless thing that was growing inside me,” says the book.  Unable to concentrate in class, her mind is simply elsewhere, thoroughly confounded by existing laws which prevent doctors from helping, where she’s even sabotaged by one physician under the guise that he’s being helpful, but he’s not, tricking her into believing the medicine he’s giving her will induce a miscarriage, only to discover much later that it actually strengthens the embryo in order to protect it against any attempted abortion.  Remember, this is the era before the Internet, where there was a pervasive ignorance of basic biology, as you had to go to the library and do your own research, often relying upon outdated information.  Told in chapter headings identifying the number of weeks she is pregnant, they escalate in rapid succession, which only heightens her increasing anxiety.  Initially keeping things completely to herself, she grows progressively more desperate, yet when she reaches out to her friends, they quickly abandon her, with Brigitte telling the more sympathetic Hélène, “It’s not our problem.  You want to go to prison with her?”  This stunning rejection leaves her a bit stupefied, particularly the way she is immediately categorized as an irresponsible and promiscuous woman, a stain on her reputation suddenly marked by shame, turning to a male friend Jean (Kacey Mottet Klein) who may have experience in the area, but his response is to try to sexually take advantage of her, a jarring revelation that might seem cringeworthy if it wasn’t such a typical male reaction.  She tracks down the perspective father in nearby Bordeaux, but his shock is that she hasn’t already taken care of the matter, remaining oblivious to her concerns, absolving himself of any responsibility, with the unsympathetic men in the film thinking only of themselves, conveniently sidestepping the reality, as it’s not happening to them, yet her lack of support, even from other women, is equally damning.

What’s perhaps most surprising is that her professor (Pio Marmaï) doesn’t take more of an interest, fully aware of her abrupt change in demeanor, one of his best students suddenly disinterested and apathetic in the classroom, leaving her all alone as well.  While she regularly makes visits to her family back home in a small town from the provinces, they are working class parents who run a bar, their lives overrun by economic concerns, living vicariously through their daughter’s educational success with the promise of a better future, something they never had, with her mother wondering what her life could have been like if she hadn’t been preoccupied by physically demanding, poorly paid work while also raising her child, so Anne never mentions a word, completely hiding her situation, as succeeding at the university level offers her the chance of class mobility.  In an act of desperation, she resorts to diabolical measures, attempting to abort the pregnancy herself with a knitting needle, but is unsuccessful, with her remaining choices only growing more gruesome.  While she sees a slew of doctors, always male, yet despite asking for help, she is told that “the law is unsparing and the methods are not safe.  Every month a girl tries her luck and dies in extreme pain,” while Hélène warns her not to end up in a hospital, where it’s a lottery, “If you’re lucky, it’s labeled a ‘miscarriage,’ but if some bastard doctor writes ‘abortion,’ and you don’t die, you end up in prison.”  What follows is a painfully graphic purgatory that exists only for women, characterized by an unembellished objectivity, where Anne has a wonderfully literary way of expressing her temporary malaise in class, suggesting she was struck by “The illness that only strikes women and turns them into housewives.”  What really stands out is the existential loneliness of her experience, her self-confidence shattered, abandoned by friends and a society that invokes criminalization by threatening prison, where the only choices left are increasingly cruel and barbaric, leaving nothing to the imagination, with Laurent Tangy’s distinctly verité handheld camera never leaving her side, nestled close to her shoulder, stuck to her like a vice grip, clinging to her facial expressions, which only accentuate the suffocating emotional claustrophobia, offering viewers no relief.  The fact that an ordinary, everyday story is as exciting as a psychological thriller without resorting to sensationalism is due to Vartolomei’s restrained acting and the director’s decision to use a narrow 4:3 format, as we’re forced to endure the utter incomprehension and unfathomability of the experience, following her rhythm and her gaze, where every moment is an exasperated disappointment.  While there’s a considerable amount of psychological territory compacted into this resolutely concise film, told in a very straightforward manner, it feels like a frontal assault to the senses, where it might be surprising to learn that the book that it's based on is only 95 pages, though the visceral quality of the film allows male viewers to put themselves in a woman’s shoes, as it physically evokes the horrifying experience of millions of women.  There is a particularly eerie musical score by Evgueni and Sacha Galperine that adds a percussive-like tension throughout, never intruding or overshadowing, but effectively adds an interior element of paranoia and dread.  While abortion is often reduced to an escalating moral issue of competing political ideologies, pro-life or pro-choice, it’s really about freedom, something universal to the core, and a woman’s right to make her own choices without the restrictive interventions of the state removing that right, where this is an unsentimentalized yet exasperatingly disturbing self-portrait of one woman’s odyssey into a heart-wrenching labyrinth of dead ends that leave her increasingly at risk, a reminder of the savagery inflicted on millions of girls and women, ultimately becoming a manifesto of self-determination.