Happiness

Life goes on as it always has in New Jersey. Joy is looking for Prince Charming, but gets her house raided by one of the candidatea. Trish thinks she is happily married, but her husband is mooning over the son's guy friends. Helen is blase for macho men, but gets a new spark for love when a man starts making obscene phone calls.
Todd Solondz is not afraid of creating a fuss. On the contrary. His Welcome to the Dollhouse was acclaimed, but some did get offended when Dawn was ca lied a faggot-retard by her classmates. His latest piece has gotten the number of angry objections to increase dramatically. The film, ironicallytitulated Happiness, is set, just like the last one, in American suburbia, and exhibits a not very happy cast of characters. Life gets interrupted - by panting voices on the phone, serial killings, not to mention sexual misconduct.
Solondz is a wonderfu I fi 1m-maker when it comes to comic tragedy. He gets involved with issues that are taboo, such as narcissism, beating of wives, pedophilia, and a mother who tastes her son's seamen. To get the audience to sympathize with the victims is something that Solondz tries to refrain from doing. He thinks it is too easy, and uninteresting, to create sen-
timentality around the portrayed victims. I nstead he provokes and tries to find the human in the people who commit the inhumane crimes.
When the film premiered in Cannes the debate ran rampant, and at the film festival in Toronto the public revolted.
I n the USA, Happiness is so controversial that it has had problems finding a distributor. The film company has decided to not release the film under its own name, but instead create a new company (like Miramax did with Kids) to create distance to the product, but still keep the control over it.
LINDA HEDIHN

Premiärstatus
Skandinavisk premiär: Medverkande
Jane Adams,Dylan Baker,Lara Flynn Boyle: Producent
Ted Hope: Manus
Todd Solondz: Foto
Maryse Deprez: Musik
Robbie Kondor: Talat språk
English