HAPPINESS fleshes out its grim stories through graphic portraits of aberrant relationships and individual obsessions. The film, centered around three sisters who struggle with the monotony of bourgeois life, leaves the viewer both laughing and gasping, hopelessly reaching for explanations for the behavior of the characters and the cruelty of their uncompromising circumstances. Pedophilia and dark sexual and psychological fantasies are featured as director Todd Solondz (WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE) drags each player in this brightly colored yet depressing party to the brink of their insecurities with marvelous precision and without qualm. The strong cast features Philip Seymour Hoffman, Dylan Baker, Lara Flynn Boyle, Ben Gazzara, and Louise Lasser.
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Synopsis
Product Description
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Review
Box Office, 07/01/1998, p.126, "...A superb black comedy....HAPPINESS leaves viewers feeling disturbed, amazed, and fascinated..." Premiere, 11/01/1998, p.32, "...[A] marvelous, multifaceted, and endlessly unsettling third feature....[Solondz is] an imaginative, witty, and deeply subversive filmmaker..." Sight and Sound, 03/1999, p.44, "...HAPPINESS stretches its taboo subject matter to the limits..." Rolling Stone, 10/29/1998, p.80, "...Unique and unmissable....HAPPINESS is potently funny and painfully affecting, often at the same time..." Entertainment Weekly, 11/06/1998, p.56, "...Tender, shocking, cathartically honest....Solondz leaves us giddy....Breaks through to haunted levels of erotic compulsion that place it close to the hypnotic artistry of BLUE VELVET..." -- Rating: A Total Film, 07/01/2003, p.137, "...Blackly comic, yet touching and sympathetic, it never flinches in its depiction of human darkness..." Los Angeles Times, 10/16/1998, p.C1, "...Solondz has an impeccable ear for current speech patterns....He also has a gift for skewering self-centeredness..."
Title Note
HAPPINESS premiered at the New York Film Festival on October 9, 1998.
Product Quotation/Excerpt
"It's good that we had this talk. Before things went too far...you know, got too serious."--Joy Jordan (Jane Adams) to Andy Kornbluth (Jon Lovitz)
Release Note
DVD Features:
Product Notes
Building on the darkly comic angst of WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE, Todd Solondz's HAPPINESS conveys suburban desperation and frustration on a larger scale than his previous film. The ensemble cast of characters centers around the lives of three sisters: Joy (Jane Adams), an awkward, naive, and unlucky musician; Helen (Lara Flynn Boyle), a beautiful, self-obsessed writer; and Trish (Cynthia Stevenson), a conservative housewife who is married to Bill (Dylan Baker), a psychiatrist harboring an unhealthy fascination for young boys. Other dysfunctional characters include the sisters' unhappy parents, Lenny and Mona Jordan (Ben Gazzara and Louise Lasser), and the lonely, sex-obsessed Allen (Philip Seymour Hoffman), who lives next to Helen and goes to Bill for therapy.
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Customer Reviews for "Happiness (DVD)"
Most Recent Customer Reviews  Love it or Hate it, February 9, 2008
By Bobloblaw
Everyone I know either loves this or loathes it. I love it. Happiness never
looks away and its subject matter is pretty disturbing, but sos the news.
Director Todd Solondz could have been the next Altman and battled it out with PT
Anderson for this type of film but he never equaled the flash of brilliance he
shows here.
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