Happiness

A film by Todd Solondz (USA, 1998),

with Lara Flynn Boyle, Jane Adams, Cynthia Stevenson, Ben Gazzara, Dylan Baker, Philip Seymor Hoffman.

Winner of the 1998 Cannes Film Festival International Critics Prize.

Everybody's looking for happiness what with those who seemingly "have it all" and those who are just "doomed to failure". But most of time, things are not what they look like... but it might well depend from where you're watching...

Here he is again, the director prodigy who shocked America with his vitriolic vision of teenagers' world in acclaimed Welcome to the Dollhouse. Now he's back with another vitriolic description of American society in their pursuit of happiness. While dialogs, spicy and cruel, are just delightful to that effect, we can not help suffering a little bit from the film's poor post-production: post-synchronization is really bad and, above all, like in his former production, the pacing is not sharp enough. The film would have had much more impact if it was edited in a more incisive way: 2 hours 14 minutes are just too long... Half an hour could have probably been cut to keep the audience fresh and on the edge. Instead, the film weakens as situations drag on. However, Happiness is worth seeing, at least for the very caustic dialogs and the cast's outstanding performance.

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