“In my dream scene, this movie won’t be understood by the audience in a few years because it sounds absurd that someone has to drive 1000 miles for an abortion in a country where it is considered legal,” Rachel Lee Goldberg told BuzzFeed News. (Spoilers ahead!)
Ursula Coyote / HBO Max
Veronica (Haley Lou Richardson) and Bailey (Barbie Ferreira) in Incomprehensible.
When Veronica (Haley Lou Richardson), 17, was found pregnant in the first few minutes of HBO Max Incomprehensible, Viewers don’t see any kind of discussion or consideration of how she will handle her pregnancy. From the moment she is in the high school bathroom stall with a positive pregnancy test, her character immediately knows that she is having an abortion.
While Veronica is hampering her decision to have an abortion, her home state of Missouri requires women under the age of 18 to seek their parents’ permission. But that’s no substitute for Veronica, who isn’t comfortable telling her mom at first. Enter Baroli (Barbie Ferreira), Veronica’s former best friend who happens to be in the school bathroom when she finds out she’s pregnant. Veronica has no one else to go to, and Bailey has a car to take her to Albuquerque, New Mexico, a thousand-mile, weekend-long journey, where Veronica can have an abortion.
Director and screenwriter Rachel Lee Goldberg told BuzzFeed News that she thinks there is a “real urgency” to make films about abortion and reproductive rights in this cultural moment because it is “under attack.”
“In my dream scene, this movie won’t be understood by the audience in a few years because it sounds absurd that someone has to drive 1,000 miles to get an abortion in a country where it is supposed to be legal. But that is obviously not the case now, “said Goldberg. “I think abortion should be generalized and discredited, so Veronica’s journey and mess shows that it didn’t come from her decision, but it does make a lot of sense to come with the difficulty of admission.”
Ursula Coyote / HBO Max
Rachel Lee Goldberg on set Incomprehensible With Haley Lou Richardson.
Goldberg said he reads a manuscript Incomprehensible Written by Jenny Hendricks and Ted Kaplan in September 2019, before it was first published as a Y novel.
One of the more significant changes to the film’s adaptation from the book was the role of Veronica’s boyfriend, Kevin (Alex McConnell). In the novel, Kevin makes holes in the condom he and Veronica use when he tries to get pregnant and keeps going to and from college. In the movie, Kevin doesn’t tell Veronica to break the condom.
“Intentionally punching a condom is a literal sexual assault,” Goldberg said. And he wants to find a “more dependent and complex version of Kevin” for the film so he can understand why Veronica is dating him in the first place.
“She may be with someone who is not the right person for her.” “Kevin is incredibly insecure and the wrong person for her, but he’s not evil.”
Goldberg said she also distanced herself from her own experiences while working on the film. After having an abortion herself in her twenties, Goldberg said it was related to the way she dealt with the situation with Veronica’s character. Something with Veronica that had nothing in common with her, however, was the fact that Goldberg had access to abortion.
“I think people can have a different kind of feeling and travel to have an abortion, and in this movie, it was an easy decision to present a way to resonate with me.” “For Veronica, the struggle comes with the tour.”
Veronica and Bailey faced their fair share of obstacles on the way to Albuquerque. Bailey’s car there actually belongs to her mom’s boyfriend and police have been searching for her since she took it without permission. These high schoolgirls are asked to do a ride with a group of people they meet at dinner, which eventually brings them to the carnival where an apparently innocent couple gives them a ride to Albuquerque. What Veronica and Bailey don’t realize is that the couple are anti-abortion activists who try to force Veronica to take their house girls hostage somewhere in between to prevent her abortion and force them to escape.
All of their Shenning’s meet with humor and reunite the characters as friends. Although sometimes funny, the issues they experience are the subject of difficulties between Veronica and her abortion.
“Obviously barriers are designed to make themselves fun and funny and wild, but of course there’s a big issue about how difficult it is for her to have an abortion,” Goldberg said. “The point is: see how hard it really is for him to do something he knows he wants to do and should be allowed to do so legally.”
Goldberg said she visited the Parenthood Clinic in Los Angeles for research on every step of the process so she could accurately portray onscreen abortion from Veronica’s perspective.
The director said she took the pill when she had an abortion, so when she found out about all the details involved in the surgical procedure, she was “fascinated” and had an “ah moment” in terms of how she wanted to perform the abortion. . Scene.
Goldberg said not to show the full scope of the experience, “it will feel like a cop-out”, which led to it. Incomprehensible sc Nascreen to include a sequence of scenes when the abortion provider explains each step in the background.
“When I was on Planned Parenthood I realized we needed to show all of this. There’s nothing we shouldn’t show or we should cut. “What we’re saying in the movie is that this is a great thing to do, the information is given here, and this is something that should be discredited and made normal.” “And even from a character’s point of view, this is what we’re doing all the time, trying to get to this place, so I don’t want to leave my hero Veronica at that moment. I want to be with him and see his feelings and see his feelings. ”
Goldberg said he’s concerned for Bailey’s character to be nervous and restless while he waits for Veronica, because “the guy waiting doesn’t know what’s going on – it’s a mystery.”
Once the two become one, Bailey asks how Veronica feels, to which he gives a clear answer, “relieved and hungry.” There is no sad or traumatic remedy following Veronica’s abortion; The girls move on and meet Nachos.
“The specific and personal experience I can have is my own, and for me, after the abortion, I am relieved not to be pregnant anymore,” Goldberg said. “And life went on.”
Still, Veronica didn’t want to tell her mother about her pregnancy or abortion, eventually she calls him from Albuquerque because the girls need help to get home on the plane.
Goldberg said Veronica’s mom may not agree with her decision, but she wants to include a scene between the two characters where the mom shows her daughter that she loves and supports him.
“Veronica has been through this journey since the beginning of the film where she knows what she wants to do, but she’s ashamed and she feels like she can’t talk about it and knows her mother won’t accept, so she Does not do so. T doesn’t want to bring it to him, “Goldberg said. “Then by the end of the movie she matured and she got older on her own and she has more confidence. We saw that Veronica’s mom loves him and she wants him to be with her even when she is with him. ”
When the weekend was over, Veronica and Bailey returned to school on Monday as friends, something that seemed impossible to both characters at the start of the film. Goldberg focused Incomprehensible Veronica’s is about the physical journey of her abortion, but ultimately the film is also about female friendship.
“The heart of the movie is about those two and their relationship,” he said. “Of course I’m an ardent advocate of reproductive rights, but these two ex-best friends are a movie about becoming best friends again, so we had a lot of discussions about abortion and its process and how it would be portrayed. The movie, most of the effort was spent on bringing these characters, their relationships and the truth to it.
