Happiness

Three sisters and the people around them. One keeps up a marriage that looks orderly, to a psychiatrist hiding what he wants from children. Another is a writer who feels something missing. The youngest stumbles through relationships. The film ties these lines together and softens none of them. Todd Solondz wrote and directed. Dylan Baker, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Jane Adams are in the cast. Roger Ebert described it as looking into the abyss of human despair, and wrote that the film suggests its most disturbing characters may in fact be part of the mainstream of humanity. Its distribution history is as harsh as its content. Sundance rejected it. Seagram, the parent of October Films, objected to the paedophilia storyline. Ronald Meyer, then head of Universal, found the film morally objectionable and blocked its release. After the MPAA gave it an NC-17, Good Machine finally put it out unrated. On a 2.2 million dollar budget it took 5.7 million. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 84 percent and Metacritic at 81. It won the FIPRESCI Prize at Cannes and the National Board of Review award for Best Ensemble Cast. Solondz returned to the same world with Life During Wartime, shown at Venice in 2009. Who it is for: viewers who want black comedy at its sharpest edge and who defend cinema's right to disturb. Who it is not for: anyone unable to sit with the paedophilia thread inside a comic frame. The film does not censor those scenes and does not protect you.