Posters

Check Out The Poster For HAPPY CHRISTMAS Starring Anna Kendrick

By Michelle McCue | June 13, 2014

In two weeks HAPPY CHRISTMAS unwraps in theaters.

Here’s a look at the new poster from the film starring Anna Kendrick and Lena Dunham. (via EW)

A budding novelist and her film director husband, Kelly (Melanie Lynskey) and Jeff (Joe Swanberg) and their two-year-old son live a peaceful existence in Chicago.

But when Jeff’s irresponsible younger sister, Jenny (Anna Kendrick), comes to live with them after a breakup, things start to change. Jenny begins a rocky relationship with a baby sitter-cum-pot dealer (Mark Webber), and she and a friend, Carson (Lena Dunham), instigate an evolution in Kelly’s life, as her career and her relationship with her husband begin to grow in new directions. But are they welcome ones?

In HAPPY CHRISTMAS, writer/actor/director Joe Swanberg (Drinking Buddies) explores both sibling relationships and the choices women face in young families. Using his unique improvisational technique, Swanberg creates a dramatic experience that results in a natural, relatable peek into his characters’ lives, filled with an engaging warmth and the actors’ own natural sense of humor.

Swanberg experienced all of the above firsthand not long ago, when, after buying a house with his wife, Kris, the couple received a house guest: Joe’s younger brother. Their short-stay houseguest turned into a three-month roommate. “It got me thinking about the idea of family, and what that really means,” the director says.

He and his wife had a new baby boy, Jude, so Swanberg began moving the idea forward in his mind about what it meant to have that younger sibling around. “It was the idea of young parents starting their own family, but having to take on a parental role to a younger sibling. I thought it would be funny if your house guest, who you hoped would help out with some of the parenting, actually needed parenting themselves. What if they added to your parent responsibilities, rather than alleviated them?”

Swanberg says, “It’s always my desire with all the movies I’ve made to put realism ahead of drama. And I wanted this movie to feel the way it feels for me when I’m around my family. You love them, but they drive you crazy.”