The issue of abortion is controversial all over the world.
Some religious texts explicitly prohibit abortion, while others, though not explicitly stated, have been interpreted by later generations to develop similar views;
The laws of various countries are at odds over whether the fetus can be counted as an independent person and enjoys the corresponding right to life, and where the rights of the mother are placed.
Even women who become pregnant from rape cannot legally have abortions in some areas.
In the film, the story of abortion is even more brutal because of these controversies.
When people are obsessed with whether the fetus can enjoy the right to life, some women who have experienced more than ten or decades of life and should undoubtedly have the right to control their own bodies and their own destiny find themselves having to pay unilaterally for involuntary pregnancy.
[Two days three weeks in April] and [never, rarely, sometimes, always] both tell abortions, and both are women's stories.
They refuse to pay the price of a permanent change in their lives, only to find that abortion is also full of resistance.
[Three weeks and two days in April] occurred in Romania in the 1980s.
Nikolai Ceausescu, the ruler at the time, believed that if Romania had a larger population, agriculture and even economic development would be faster.
Under this logic, abortion is prohibited by law.
Women who have conceived unexpectedly and do not want to lose their lives have to seek illegal abortion.
[Two days in three weeks of April] was bold enough to start the story of abortion without giving the background of the times.
In contrast, [never, rarely, sometimes, always] hesitate for a moment, opening with the malevolent passage that a girl often suffers as she grows up —
The girl Ao Qiu sang on the stage, the kind of song that struggled to find herself, and offstage, a boy laughed badly and shouted "slut" in front of everyone.
The small malice suffered by women precedes the greater suffering event of abortion in front of the audience, and the social soil of women's survival difficulties is first revealed.
The story takes place in modern America.
The laws of various states in the United States do not have the same provisions on abortion, and this background is also explained in the film.
Ao Qiu searched for "abortion under the age of 18 in Pennsylvania" and learned that minors must have parental consent to have an abortion.
In order not to alarm her family, she had to travel to New York.
The journey begins.
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Female empathy stories
These two journeys are accompanied by women.
Female empathy has thus become one of the themes of the story.
Female empathy, which is almost an area that has to be covered when talking about such gender issues, physical problems, abortion issues.
Even as human beings desperately try to understand each other, a harsh truth is:
Only by taking the same risks and paying the same price can it be possible to "empathize" with the situation of women.
Hitman ([never, rarely, sometimes, always]) did a pre-survey when he heard questions like this at some mutual aid agencies:
Have your partner ever had sex against your will?
Has your partner ever asked to have sex without contraception?
Never, rarely, sometimes, always, pick one to answer.
You don't have to feel the heartbeat in the abdominal cavity, you don't have to bear the fear of the body and even life changing forever, you don't have to be so direct and so close to the separation of flesh and blood, there is room for the breeding of a light fluke mentality.
In the face of pregnancy risk and abortion crisis, there is almost only a common fate-like understanding among women, which does not require any complex thinking process, does not require any acquired education, and does not have any threshold.
It's almost a moving body reflex.
In both films, the two girls form a close alliance.
Only the female partner, after the abortion operation, the concern is, do you feel okay? They value each other's feelings.
It is no exaggeration to say that the film establishes a spatial boundary of understanding around them.
Everyone else can't get in.
Outsiders, unable to perceive their situation or at least deeply empathize with them, act cruelly, arbitrarily, or foolishly.
During [three weeks and two days in April], Ottiriya was repeatedly frustrated when she booked a hotel.
The front desk just said with a cold face, no booking records, no room anymore.
Even suspect that they did not have a reservation at all, but instead talk to their colleagues and smile vaguely.
[Never, rarely, sometimes, always], it's local health care workers.
When he learned that Ao Qiu had the idea of having an abortion, He Pi smiled and said things like "many couples want to have children but can't have children", "abortion is to kill a child".
Even releasing similar sensational educational films is nothing less than intimidation.
And the two girls, there is no need to say tacit understanding with each other.
Otilia, in order to successfully perform the abortion of Gabita, was angry but reluctant to accept the doctor's sexual request;
In a conversation with her boyfriend, Otiriya asks, what would you do if it was me who was pregnant?
She concluded that at least Gabita would.
This sense of trust born of empathy, in [never, rarely, sometimes, always], manifests itself in Skylar's understanding of Ocho's pregnancy.
He did not ask for any details, nor did he ask who the child's biological father was, but immediately decided to make up the money.
Ask your boss for a leave of absence and go to New York to get a tire together.
This empathy is enough for a woman, especially Ao Qiu's cousin, to realize:
It doesn't matter who that little sperm comes from, what matters is that Ao Qiu, the "person", is the future of Ao Qiu.
Another design parallel to Otillia's body, in order to raise money for the trip, Sgueira calls and asks the strange boy who is on the way out to show his kindness.
One is to give the body and one is to give the kiss.
Ao Qiu, who was deliberately separated by the boy, panicked and struggled to find them in the corner, and in the boy's unsympathetic kiss, quietly reached forward, grabbed Skylar's hand, and then hooked her little finger.
No one spoke, and the camera switched between Skylar's expressions that did not dare to act rashly, and the girls' wordless but quiet hands holding each other.
It's not a very strong and inseparable hand-holding, but it's already a "don't be afraid, I'm here".
This silent declaration is too fragile to withstand any rough treatment from reality.
If boys, like the male doctors in [three weeks and two days of April], are good at exploiting the girls' plight and forcefully seeking physical benefits for themselves, where is there a little room for the girls' union to resist?
But the determination to accompany each other is the most powerful thing at this moment.
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Victims and survivors
Although both are the stories of two girls setting off, the two films focus on different objects.
The protagonist [never, rarely, sometimes, always] is Ao Qiu.
The unintended pregnancy of a teenage girl, the first party in this abortion story.
The pregnant Gabita is only the second protagonist in another story.
The protagonist who is running around is her roommate, Otilia.
Gabita herself, for most of the film, is almost completely a chaotic, weak and helpless image.
She seems to be more in line with people's habitual imagination of "victims" than Oqiu.
The abortion doctor asks her to come forward in person, but she cringes, asks Otiriya to go on her behalf, and asks her to lie that she is a relative;
Otiriya is forced to sell her body, and she panics and hides outside the door to smoke;
When the miscarriage was complete and the bloody embryo fell to the ground, she broke down and asked Ottelia to help her dispose of the fetus.
Otilia became the one who was completely dependent, the one who confronted all problems on the front lines.
As a woman who does not have to suffer a miscarriage directly, but must solve all her problems.
Her perspective is both realistic and calm.
Ao Qiu is still a minor, but her response is much more mature than Gabita's.
Although in part because, she can only rely on herself.
She not only took the initiative to make the decision to have an abortion, but also took the initiative to choose to go to New York State.
From beginning to end, "taking back the dominance of the body" is the best interpretation of her actions in the film.
After the test confirmed that she was pregnant, the first thing she did was -
Put yourself a nose loop with a pin.
As the boy kissed Sgueira, she reached out and took Sgueira's hand.
It is also with this touch that women are in control of their bodies.
This desire to control the body was equally strong for Otilea.
In [three weeks and two days in April], after being sexually assaulted by a doctor, she went to the bathroom to rinse her lower body, and without saying a word, faced it all with an attitude of being bitten by a dog.
The camera is aimed at her back for a long time, and the body is frozen, thinking, and purifying itself.
Ao Qiu's actions embodied that slogan:
"I'm not a victim, I'm a survivor."
At the beginning of the film, she is also rude to the boy who laughs at her "slut", a cup of cold water topping, viciously fighting back.
Of course, the victims and survivors are only relative.
Ocho and Gabita are both victims and survivors.
For a long time, American movies portrayed abortionists as villains or made abortion unsuccessful.
For example, in 1916, "Where am I?" ], 1934 [Man in White].
By the 21st century, [Juno] and [One Night Belly] have improved their concepts, but they have also beautified unplanned pregnancies and abortions as unrealistic fairy tales.
[Never, rarely, sometimes, always] what follows [three weeks and two days in April] is to shift the focus back to these real women, to restore their dual identities as victims and survivors.
They are not good or bad, they have been hurt, but they are also somewhat brave.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right">03</h1>
Trivial dilemmas
Women's stories are hard to shoot.
Because of the need to express any "female" in a realistic way, there is almost no "story" to speak of.
Look [Jeanne Dilmann], for three long hours, she took care of the house mechanically.
With potatoes that seem to be cut to the point of being cut to the ground, torture the audience's nerves.
In the hope that she can feel a little bit of her unbearable mediocrity, painful boredom.
"Women's stories" or "abortion stories" are pseudo-propositions.
What an earth-shattering story of abortion?
[Three weeks and two days in April] or [never, rarely, sometimes, always], is documenting all the chicken-to-piece tediousness of this abortion journey, all the stumbling corners.
Whether from the perspective of reality or art, this is an inevitable choice -
Only that kind of triviality is close enough to the anxiety and pain of the person concerned.
As a result, the audience can see that abortion is not a standardized medical process.
Rather, it is a procedure that is countless chicken feathers, a procedure that goes back and forth between the parties and seems to be difficult to advance forever.
Otillia began to prepare from toothpaste, soap, and sanitary napkins, and a two-day journey seemed to be going to never return;
She shuttled from hotel to hotel, talking back and forth, carefully concealing her purpose, and pleading bitterly.
Make phone calls back and forth, pool money, and find a room where you can have an abortion;
The bargain with the abortion doctor is even more difficult to breathe.
Male doctors on the upper hand have seized on their weak points of limited budget and embarrassing circumstances.
The money has been paid, and there is no ability to find another person to perform the operation at another time.
The man pretended to be his most difficult and unwarranted risk of the law, putting pressure back and forth with words.
The two girls in the predicament are simply overwhelmed.
As for Ao Qiu, an underage girl, she is even more faced with all kinds of torturous procedures in the adult world because of abortion.
In the local medical assistance agency, the staff showed a kind and friendly smile,
But the image of abortion is killing, and the whole process is like a horror movie.
And in New York, it is even more headless fly-like whirling.
Holding the camera, they followed them tirelessly, tirelessly playing back and forth between the two men carrying large suitcases and walking laboriously and dazedly through the unfamiliar streets.
I don't know where the direction is, where is the end, every security check, every time the joint force lifts the box, and the hard work goes up and down the steps, it has not been missed.
In the fixed shots of finally no longer turbulent, they get a patient but not encouraging answer from the medical staff:
Retesting is mandatory and surgery can only be scheduled tomorrow.
The most intolerable but necessary process is used as the title [never, rarely, sometimes, always].
As director Hitman saw in reality, the paramedics asked Ochu about sexual experience:
From the number of sexual partners you've had, to "whether your sexual partner has ever slapped you or slapped you, or ever done any other physical harm," and "whether your sexual partner forced you to have sex," as the court asked, Ocho can only answer with four options: "Never, rarely, sometimes, always."
Although no detailed description is needed, the mere fact that such a question is enough to evoke Ao Qiu's evasive eyes and suppressed sobs.
Or even more because the Q&A is closed and doesn't require any details.
Violence is violence itself, and this most basic fact has shed its thick pretense.
Those violent pictures and feelings can only be locked up in Ao Qiu's mind, and they are extremely clear.
There are only two words that can be spoken.
If she could argue, she might be able to rationalize some of the details and convince herself:
She was not a victim, and she may have been wishful thinking at the time, or perhaps there was some misunderstanding.
But she could only give a qualitative answer, which opened her wounds fiercely.
Ao Qiu's close-up stays in the picture for a long time, and the camera, like the Q&A itself, cannot be avoided.
It's impossible to fast-forward, and the process that you have to face is unbearable?
Impatience is the meaning of the abortion story.
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Intensive violence
Despite the trivialities of both films, both films simulate the long torment of an abortion journey.
But triviality and everydayness do not mean that there is no violence in it.
Violence pervades women's lives, either explicitly or implicitly.
Whether it is a public "slut" humiliation, or the scene of a man in an empty subway looking at the girl ambiguously and obscenely sticking his hand into the crotch of his pants, it is finely and densely woven into a net, binding and destroying women's self-esteem and personality.
Under that playful look, women are dwarfed into a thing, and self-doubt arises and is reinforced again and again.
Both films chose not to shy away from the process of abortion.
Although none of them explained how the child came to be. There is also no presentation of sex, let alone direct images of sexual violence.
But abortion as a medical procedure replaces sexual violence and social structure violence in the film, innocently becoming a foreign body inserted into the female body.
Gabita and Ocho, lying on the bed or operating table, legs open, unable to move,
It's like an ingredient for mermaid meat. Abortion itself allows them to regain their freedom, but it is"regained".
The "never, rarely, sometimes, always" question and answer, like this abortion procedure, calmly and scientifically reproduces the violence that has occurred.
They all seem to express that when talking about abortion, even if one can avoid the previous circumstances of how the fetus was formed, ignoring the woman's wishes during the conception.
The pain they endure is also real and will always be reproduced in other ways.
Christian Monge was even more bold in presenting the aborted fetus in [three weeks and two days in April].
Although it is still a four-month-three-week-old embryo, it already has a vague humanoid shape like a ginseng doll.
So he wrapped himself in a bloody towel and stayed on the ground.
The camera mercilessly features the violence endured by women,
Through this bloody embryo, it is transformed into visual violence that impacts the audience.
A publisher asked Monge to remove the images of abortions and embryos, but he flatly refused: "From the very beginning of the creation, these images had to be in the story. ”
As for this embryo, the abortion doctor's opinion is:
"Don't throw the fetus in the toilet, it will block the sewers,
Whether it is 'whole' or 'broken', it is not OK;
Also don't bury it where the dog can smell it;
My advice is to wrap it up carefully, take the bus, find a tall building, go to ten floors, and throw it out of the garbage. ”
The embryo seemed to him to be "evidence" of an illegal abortion that needed to be destroyed.
Instead of being buried, being mourned.
And it was these two women who regarded him as life.
Gabita stared dead at Otilya, who was wrapped around the fetus, and pleaded with her, "Can you bury him in the dirt?" ”
The two abortion stories, after a series of trivial and unbearable violence, both end in a return to calm.
Otillia and Gabita sat down to eat in the hotel restaurant, agreeing never to mention what had happened again.
Ocho and Skylar also ate something and got into the return bus.
Everything seems to have not changed, only the girls who embark on the journey will remember this experience for a lifetime.
Their lives have inevitably changed because of this fetus, and their bodies, genders, and meanings of life have never changed.
But at least, the great difficulty does not die, and the possibility of life still exists.