HAPPY ENDINGS (2005)I don't always enjoy art-house movies; often, I find them pretentious and taking themselves too seriously. But I have to say, I really enjoyed HAPPY ENDINGS, and was truthfully a little surprised by this. Equally surprising was that my wife enjoyed it as well (she trends away from artsy type 'films' leaning more toward shlock action, horror/thriller and goofy romantic comedy as her genres of choice).
HAPPY ENDINGS is character driven, and writer/director
Don Roos did an excellent job in getting the characters developed to three dimensions very quickly. We may not have actually liked all the characters in this story, but we definitely cared about what happened to them.
We ended up with four gay couples (or five, depending upon how you count them), a brother - stepsister sexual relationship that actually ends up being more sweet and touching than icky, a father-son who share the same lover, issues on adoption and abortion and a noisome loser who we felt sorry for and somehow came away with a film that as conversatives we really enjoyed. I mean really enjoyed. Wow.
The humor was dark, the cinematography was outstanding and the acting very 'natural.' I liked the caption cards throughout the film as adding a very nice touch. With them, the film did not take itself too seriously, and they allowed some depth without boring exposition on-screen. I saw this film as being a bit experimental and I not only appreciated the effort, but think their experiments worked.
I listened to the commentary on the DVD; some comments on the commentary:
- Roos often mentioned his attraction toward actor Jason Ritter; I found this equally as disturbing coming from a gay man as I would from a straight director constantly harping on being attracted to a female actor in his production. Oh well
- the cinematography had some very very subtle elements - the use of contrast to help 'define' characters, almost the entire film shot hand held and long takes with little editing "intrusion." I am not a fan of the "quick edit" or whatever it is called, and I much prefer this style of shooting.
- in keeping with the visual style and photography, most scenes were shot in one long take and both director and DP allowed the actors to "just go." This really worked for me, and contributed to the totally natural way the characters 'felt.'
I give HAPPY ENDINGS 4.5 out of 5.
