In 1998 I was in my hotel room in NY checking out Village Voice when I came across news that some Distributors had disowned Todd Solonz’s new movie ‘Happiness’. I’m not sure if it was the rape, pedophilia, suicide and murder or the bizarre sexual phone caller that had particularly upset them, but once I read the piece I hot-footed it down to the Angelika as fast as I could. I was totally convinced that anything that could stir up such controversy was something that I had to check out especially as I had so loved Solonz’s first feature ‘Welcome to the Dolls House’.
Some 14 years later and I am a huge fan of Solonz’s work. I must profess that I don’t always totally passionately love each movie, but I both thoroughly enjoy and respect them, for after all he so captures dysfunctional characters and behaviour better than any other filmmaker. And that is just up my street!
For his latest movie which is billed as a drama, Mr Solonz has created a rather brilliant deadpan comedy that is a somewhat compassionate tale about a couple of life’s losers. Tubby 30-year-old desperately sad Abe still lives at home with his unhinged controlling father and his irritating smothering mother who both seem to actively dislike their own son. He also works ostensibly as a numbers cruncher at his father’s real estate developer but most of the time he just idles away daydreaming. His one act of trying to assert himself is the incongruous bright yellow Hummer he drives everywhere.
Abe meets Miranda at a Wedding and asks her out on a date after exchanging only a few words. Well, not exactly ‘exchanging’ as Miranda is recovering from a recent break up and is taking so much medication she is practically comatose. Without the energy to refuse Abe she not only agrees to the date, but almost immediately afterwards, to marrying him too. Even this doesn’t really bolster Abe’s low self esteem that much, and when he and his new fiance run into her ostentatious ex boyfriend who believes he is much better than Abe, he agrees.
The only way that the unlikeable Abe would ever be happy is in the fantasies that he has and that usually include shy retiring Maria from the Office who he imagines as a seductive man-eater who cannot keep her hands off him.
Solonz is at his best with the scenes which are excoriating uncomfortable to watch whilst at the same time extremely funny such as when Abe’s dour father and exasperating mother try to make polite with Miranda’s annoying parents when the families meet for the first time.
The fascinating thing about this …. as with the main characters in previous Solonz’s movies …. we may sympathize with Abe, but we can never actually like him. I guess we feel part pity and part contempt. He is one of the walking wounded …. and deeply dysfunctional ….but then, what chance did he ever have with that family.
Great cast : Jordan Gelber as Abe, Selma Blair as Miranda but it is the permanently manic Christopher Walker and the scarily odd Mia Farrow playing the parents who seem just a tad too realistically for me.
This is by no means an obviously brilliant film, but like ‘Happiness’ way back then, but it is one of those movie you will not stop thinking about and mull over in your minds for some time after.
P.S. 1998 was also the same year I moved to the US and my own dysfunctional life.
★★★★★★★★
