After “Zouzou” and “Aurore”, director Blandine Lenoir finds actress Laure Calamy for the luminous “Annie Colère”. A film on the MLAC (Movement for the freedom of abortion and contraception), which tells of an unknown collective struggle. We met them.
Annie Anger, freedom and solidarity
The history of the MLAC is unknown, and yet this short political movement of the 70s transformed French society. A story of emancipation, affirmation of the autonomy of women and their full right to control their bodies. With this account of this particular struggle, transmitted thanks to the writing of the author and the collective investment of the actresses of Annie Anger a greater conviction: that of the need for collective and united action to protect rights that are still fragile. We met Blandine Lenoir and Laure Calamy, respectively behind and in front of the camera of this beautiful feature film.
What drew you both to this story?
Blandine Lenoir : I think I felt capable of it, in all humility. I wouldn’t have made this film at 30. I put a lot of pressure on myself, because it’s a little-known story and I wanted to pay tribute and give thanks to all these extraordinary women. In short, I did not want to crash. So I was very rigorous about the historical aspect of Annie Anger, but also on what I had to say about it. It’s not just a page of history, it’s also seeing clearly what touches me on the subject, why I want to tell this solidarity. MLAC is not just about abortion, it is also about collective political action.
I only realize it now, I was an activist in the BARBE, and I really lived this experience of the collective which makes you smarter, stronger, more powerful because of being in a group, d to be united in a common struggle with people we don’t know well. I realize that I couldn’t have done Annie Anger without this experience.
Annie Anger is a story of collective liberation, so is it a universal female portrait?
BL : Annie is a bit me, a bit Laure, any woman entering feminism. You enter feminism when you experience an unfair, inexplicable, disgusting situation… A basic thing that all girls know, at 12 you have growing breasts, and you have lots of guys hooking you up in the street . You feel dirty, you don’t know how to handle it, you say to yourself “it’s my fault”, and then you realize that all your friends are going through it too, so you say to yourself “ah but it’s not me actually…maybe if we all go through this and we’re together, something will happen…”.
That’s the entry into feminism, realizing that there are a lot of us going through the same situations, and that if we all do it, together, and that a majority of guys also rebel against these situations , we will succeed in changing society. That’s why the MLAC upsets me, it’s becausethey and they together succeed in transforming society.
Laura Calamy : What touches me about Annie is that she’s someone who doesn’t necessarily have words as she would like, who doesn’t express her thoughts easily. Besides, does she have a thought of her own, insofar as she follows a mapped out route? To have children, to work in the factory, to find it normal to be in one’s modest place and therefore to keep out of the political question, not to open it up. She will know a first anger, and it is from there that she will begin to participate in the MLAC. It will seize her, and open her to important questions: what is it to be a woman? how do we act together? What is body awareness?
She will then succeed, step by step, in authorizing herself, in thinking, in feeling capable, and in being able to formulate all of this in front of others. There is the idea of making things that were deeply buried bloom.
Finally, the struggle for abortion is part of a broader struggle to become the autonomous subject of one’s life?
BL : Even if we talk about abortion, the bodies are never objects in Annie Anger. They are active subjects, even those who have an abortion. We talk to them, they respond, they act.
CL : Because they understand, through others, what is happening, then they become subjects, and the trauma of the experience disappears.
BL : What is traumatic today is to have to wait 6 weeks for an appointment, to be received like shit, to be asleep because it suits the hospital and it goes faster, to feel guilty.. That’s traumatic. The law is beautiful, it exists and no one touches it. But the perverse effect is that it is therefore more difficult to mobilize…
