Writer & Director: Todd Solondz
Cinematographer: Maryse Alberti
Joy Jordan: Jane Adams
Trish Jordan: Cynthia Stevenson
Helen Jordan: Lara Flynn Boyle
Bill Maplewood: Dylan Baker
Billy Maplewood: Rufus Read
Kristina: Camryn Manheim |
For the characters in Todd Solondz's latest film, "Happiness", this most elusive of emotions is little more than a brittle, glossy surface beneath which bubbles a disturbing mix of bizarre and deviant behaviour.
There are almost a dozen characters in "Happiness" and with them Solondz creates an extended family of people struggling to connect with each other. The men are emotionally bumbling and inept, longing for love and sexual satisfaction but unable to articulate their needs. Perhaps the most disturbing of these is the psychiatrist, Bill Maplewood. He is married with children and has a son who is desperately trying to come to terms with puberty. Whilst talking openly and honestly with Billy about the realities of male sexuality, Maplewood chooses an aberrant and disturbing path for himself.
The women are little better - Trish Jordan is "happily" married, in her own words she "has it all". But husband Bill has lost interest in sex and Trish hints at envying sister Helen's success as a published writer, and with a variety of men. On the other hand, Helen bemoans the fact that she is so much in demand. Joy, the third sister, is naive and lacks confidence. 30, with no career to speak of and no man in her life she is, rather ironically, seen as the family failure.
The performances are uniformly excellent. Dylan Baker brings an ordinariness to Bill Maplewood that makes his aberrant sexual behaviour particularly menacing - in Hannah Arendt's words, he and many of the other characters in the film represent the banality of evil.
Repulsion, sympathy and laughter struggled for supremacy in my reaction to this very confronting film. "Happiness" deserves its R rating. Whilst it won't be to everyone's taste, I found that the film's characters and images stayed with me long after the closing credits, and kept me thinking about this savage critique of middle-class suburbia - smooth and shiny on the surface, dark and turbulent underneath.
The role of film should not be restricted to simple entertainment. There should always be a place for films that provoke, challenge and critique the human experience.
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