{"id":2828,"date":"2014-09-03T13:08:06","date_gmt":"2014-09-03T12:08:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/?p=2828"},"modified":"2014-09-03T14:16:10","modified_gmt":"2014-09-03T13:16:10","slug":"film-review-the-obvious-child","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/2014\/09\/03\/film-review-the-obvious-child\/","title":{"rendered":"Film Review: “Obvious Child”"},"content":{"rendered":"

We’ve not had a film review here before, have we? \u00a0\"OC-poster-screenshot-121013\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As far as I can tell, the ratio of talked-about-ness to actual screenings of\u00a0Obvious Child<\/em>\u00a0is unusually\u00a0high; it doesn’t seem to have got all that much time in mainstream cinemas, which meant that I had to schlep along to Manchester’s Cornerhouse to see it. \u00a0(I have a theory about cinemas, which is that the artistic\u00a0quality of the establishment is inversely proportional to the comfort\u00a0of the seating. \u00a0The Cornerhouse is a nice example of this rule in action.) \u00a0Why it’s attracted so much attention is captured in the elevator pitch: it’s a romantic comedy about abortion. \u00a0It certainly got certain elements of the US commentariat all excited – RightWingWatch has a nice little compilation here<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/span> – though admittedly, as far as I can tell, the objections haven’t been matched in the UK, where the emphasis has been much more along the lines of “It’s that film that got the American right all antsy”.<\/p>\n

I can see why certain sectors of the commentariat have got upset about it; the film is remarkable in just how down-to-earth\u00a0its handling of the plot is. \u00a0The plot is dead simple: a woman (Donna, played by Jenny Slate) loses her boyfriend and her job within the space of about three frames, gets drunk, has a one-night-stand, gets pregnant, decides to have an abortion, lets the father of the child know all this in the course of a stand-up routine, has that abortion, then decides to watch\u00a0Gone with the Wind<\/em>. \u00a0It’s that straightforward.<\/p>\n

For Donna, it’s less a matter of obvious children than obvious decisions. \u00a0She doesn’t want to be pregnant, and sets about not being. \u00a0There’s no indication that she’ll regret the decision; there’re no lingering shots of Donna\u00a0agonising over whether it’s the right thing to do; the father (Max, played by Jake Lacy)\u00a0says he wants to be a grandfather in passing, but doesn’t try to talk her out of it, or even insist that he should have a say. \u00a0Donna is a little nervous about the procedure – but then, it makes sense to be a little nervous about having a mole removed or any other minor surgery. \u00a0There’s no moral freight, though. \u00a0Donna is not irresponsible – I mean, she might have done something a bit irresponsible in not taking more care with the contraception, but that’s a shared thing with Max; and making a decision about what to do in the wake of having done something a bit daft is<\/em> responsible.<\/p>\n

In other words, Obvious Child<\/em> is\u00a0just about a person making a decision.<\/p>\n

And that’s quite refreshing. \u00a0Quite a lot of pro-choice arguments allow that the decision to terminate a pregnancy is a big one; but\u00a0I wonder whether that concedes a lot – too much – to the anti-abortion side. \u00a0There’s no reason why\u00a0deciding to abort has to be a big deal, especially when it’s only weeks into the pregnancy and the foetus’d be barely visible anyway. \u00a0Maybe that’s what’s upset a lot of people: not so much that she has an abortion, but that the narrative about it being a hard decision that might be regretted is punctured.<\/p>\n

Indeed, when the doctor whom Donna approaches starts wittering on about alternatives, you want to yell at the screen: when an articulate and coherent and obviously competent woman says “I want an abortion”, which part of that don’t you understand? \u00a0The real scandal here is that a minor medical procedure might set her back a month’s rent. \u00a0But, hey, there’s a free HIV test thrown in…<\/p>\n

Oh: the other thing about the film – which is definitely to be recommended – is that it’s laugh-out-loud funny, and not ashamed to be clever. \u00a0Donna is a stand-up comic by night; her routines are possibly the least funny part of the film – except, ironically enough, the one that’s supposed to be a disaster. \u00a0(I’m not sure if she’s supposed to be a B-grade comic, or whether it’s just hard to write a pretend standup routine; it could easily be the latter.) \u00a0During the day, she works at a shop called “Unoppressive Non-Imperialist Books”; Max is presented as a whitebread MBA type, but he’s read Bola\u00f1<\/span>o<\/span>. \u00a0Elsewhere, it’s rude, embarrassing, and gloriously brazen. \u00a0There’re fart noises, and there’s a polysyllabic vocabulary: this is scatological humour for people who listen to Between the Ears<\/em>. \u00a0Because even if you think that having a termination is a big deal, life is still absurd, and your brain doesn’t switch off. \u00a0Donna isn’t just a baby-vat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’ve not had a film review here before, have we? \u00a0 As far as I can tell, the ratio of talked-about-ness to actual screenings of\u00a0Obvious Child\u00a0is unusually\u00a0high; it doesn’t seem to have got all that much time in mainstream cinemas, which meant that I had to schlep along to Manchester’s Cornerhouse to see it. \u00a0(I […]<\/p>\n

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