HAPPY, HAPPY – The Review

Winner of the World Cinema Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and Norway’s official selection for the upcoming Best Foreign Film Oscar race, HAPPY, HAPPY is the feature debut of Norwegian director Anne Sewitsky. The clever new dark comedy is the story of a successful but unhappy Danish couple trying to rebuild their damaged marriage. Along with their preteen African-adopted son, the well-educated Sigve (Henrik Rafaelsen) and Elisabeth (Maibritt Saerens) buy a secluded house in the country next to the less bright but equally unhappy Kaja (Agnes Kittelsen) and her surly husband Eirik (Joachim Rafaelsen), who have a son of their own. Since there’s not a lot to do in this isolated locale, the unlikely foursome begin sharing dinners and playing games. These games lead to uncomfortable marital comparisons and during one, it’s revealed that Kaja and Eirik have not had sex in over a year and that Elisabeth has recently been unfaithful to Sigve. These situations and personalities set up adulterous liaisons, dark secrets, and ill will.

This low-key comedy revolves around that familiar plot standby of a clash between rubes and upper class, but Sewitsky, working from a smart script by Ragnhild Tronvoll, gives the story a distinctive spin. They mine the clash of cultures for comedy, but there’s an undertow of sadness to the film. HAPPY, HAPPY is a study of couples. Elisabeth and Sigve have lost all passion, her affair really crippled their marriage, yet they seem determined to work things out and their understanding runs deep. Then there’s Eirik and Kaja, who couldn’t be more mismatched. She’s lively, vivacious, and full of sweetness. He’s dour, self-absorbed, and incommunicative. Despite their differences, however, one senses that neither couple is headed for a divorce. They look at each other and see not potential rifts, but “happiness” – or what passes for it (the film’s Norwegian title, “Sykt Lykkelig,” more literally translates in English as “insanely happy”, a more accurate description of the film’s bittersweet humor)

All four actors are good but Agnes Kittelsen is what makes HAPPY, HAPPY so memorable. She gives Kaja such effervescence, always smiling even when there is nothing to smile about. Kaja exudes positive energy and cannot help it when her actions either makes someone else around her happy or rubs someone else the wrong way. There’s genuine, gentle warmth to HAPPY, HAPPY’s comedy, springing forth as it does from such scenes as when the increasingly liberated Kaia overcomes her longtime fear of singing in public to lead her church choir in “Amazing Grace” or when the two boys (one black, one white) play an uncomfortable game they call “slave”. HAPPY, HAPPY runs a scant 85 minutes and much of that is padded with cutaways to an unnecessary Greek chorus of American singers punctuating the goings-on with rockabilly tunes, but it’s a good film because it is a true film. It humbles other films that claim to be about family secrets and eccentricities. It understands that marriages are complicated and problems are not solved quickly, just in time for the film to end. Family asserts itself in mysterious ways that alienate and unite. All married couples have problems that go on and on, and if they aren’t solved, they’re dealt with. HAPPY, HAPPY is recommended.

4 of 5 Stars

HAPPY, HAPPY opens in St. Louis today, October 7th, at Landmark Theater’s Tivoli Theater