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BY KIM MORGAN |
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Happiness Rated NC-17 Now playing The independent production company Good Machine released Happiness after it was dropped by October Films under orders from parent Universal. Trish (Cynthia Stevenson) and Bill (Dylan Baker) celebrate love, American style. Happiness. The title is so obviously ironic that by today's standards it means almost nothing. Any Redbook reader already knows that happiness is something Zoloft won't produce and what Ozzie and Harriet didn't really feel. And any Seinfeld watcher knows that selfish, self-loathing urbanites who come from dysfunctional families can be funny and that death, disease and masturbation can be paraded on prime time without censorship or disclaimers. Case in point: When weak and whiny George Costanza rejoiced after the death of his fiancée (whom he was too cowardly to leave), the episode was not billed as "a very special Seinfeld." It was business as usual--and more successful than ever. So what does Todd Solondz's newest film, Happiness, have to offer that our grandmas don't already know? Two things: A funny pedophile and more uncomfortable screen time. Like Woody Allen's vignette-style Hannah and Her Sisters, Solondz's film is centered on three sisters who look, act and talk nothing alike. The only thing they share is a future in which they will have to face the fact that their lives are pitiful, shallow and horrifying. Joy (Jane Adams) is the loser sister who, in the film's opening, dumps the only man who will probably ever want her: a passive-aggressive admirer (played splendidly by Jon Lovitz) who ends up killing himself. A failed folk singer who lives in her parents' house (they have since moved to retire in Florida), the stupidly optimistic Joy yearns for a better life. She quits her telecommunications job and begins teaching English to foreigners. She meets a student named Vlad (Jared Harris), a Russian émigré who charms her with his rendition of "You Light Up My Life." After they have sex, he steals her guitar and CD player and leaves to resume life with his prostitute girlfriend, who later assaults the now love-struck Joy at work. The two other sisters, however, are models of success. Helen (Lara Flynn Boyle) is a beautiful Manhattan writer who is worshipped by all ("You don't know how exhausting it is to be wanted all the time"), most notably by her neighbor Allen (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), a lonely schlump who makes obscene phone calls to women. When he begins calling Helen anonymously, the empty writer is intrigued and, with hopes of adding depth to her life, invites him to act out his sexually aggressive desires. Trish (Cynthia Stevenson) is a chirpy housewife who proclaims that "she has it all," and who doles out insulting pick-me-ups to sister Joy--"Just because you've hit 30 doesn't mean you can't be fresh anymore." Trish lives with the film's most disturbed--and, oddly, most sympathetic--character, her husband Bill (Dylan Baker). The deluded Trish is not someone Bill, a pedophile wracked with guilt over molesting his son's sleep-over friend, can very well confide in. He leans more towards his pubescent son, Billy (Rufus Read), a likable kid who comes to his father with a variety of questions about masturbation. Bill is not the least bit ruffled by these natural boyish concerns and is even willing to help his son: "Do you want me to show you, Billy?" Bill's encouraging words--which remain words, never on-screen actions--account for both the picture's NC-17 rating and its compelling center. Though Joy is presumably the most sympathetic character, it is really Bill whom we see as most human. This is to Solondz's credit and fault. With the remarkable writing, timing and acting of Bill, Trish and Billy's situation, all of the other stories pale in comparison. (One scene between Bill and Billy during which Billy asks his father why he does what he does is one of the most heartbreaking and well-acted moments ever put to film.) The other plot lines fail not just in the audacious severity of their subject matter but in their tired, dark, referential humor. How shocking and funny is it to learn that lonely, frumpy, overweight Kristina (Camryn Manheim), who likes to watch TV and eat ice cream in bed (and who also really likes Allen), killed a man and then chopped up his body? Not very. John Waters did this better in Serial Mom. And how predictably Gen-X is choosing Air Supply's "I'm All Out of Love" as the song Allen and Kristin slow dance to in a restaurant? Extremely. Didn't Adam Sandler do the same thing (and more cleverly, I might add) when he and his date ice skated to "Endless Love" in Happy Gilmore? And how hip is Solondz for having Marla Maples do a cameo as a divorced realtor: "Divorce was the best thing that ever happened to me"? Is this a cutting-edge indie movie or an episode of Designing Women? Like his Welcome to the Dollhouse, Solondz's Happiness
falls prey to being two films at once: One is well written and hilariously
mean-spirited, as well as sensitive and well acted; the other is lazily
dark for dark's sake, trite and filled with sit-comish "types." When
writer-director Neil LaBute uses types, he does so with a strong allegorical
purpose. When Solondz tries the same thing, it is with a shaky sense
of what parody actually means. It becomes bad (or good) TV. Surprisingly,
or not surprisingly, then, Happiness's best performances come
from actors who are primarily from television: Stevenson from Hope
& Gloria and Baker from Murder One. Is this ironic? - - - - - - - - - - - -
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