Happiness
ハピネス
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
Three sisters and the people who want them; the studio refused to release it.
Happiness moves between three sisters from New Jersey and the people around them, letting their stories brush against each other without ever joining up.
Joy, the youngest, is gentle and directionless, and everyone tells her so. She breaks up with her boyfriend, Andy, who calls her shallow; soon afterwards he takes his own life. She crosses a picket line to teach English to immigrants and sleeps with one of her students, Vlad, a Russian taxi driver. He turns out to live with another woman, and when Joy finds her stolen guitar and stereo in his flat, he pressures her into lending him five hundred dollars to get them back.
Helen, the middle sister, is a celebrated writer who suspects the praise is undeserved and that nobody wants her for herself. Her neighbour Allen, a lonely office worker, makes obscene phone calls to women, and Helen is drawn to the anonymous voice; when they meet, nothing comes of it. Allen turns instead to Kristina, who lives down the hall and confesses that she killed the building's doorman after he raped her.
Trish, the eldest, believes her family is perfect. Her husband, Bill Maplewood, is a psychiatrist; Allen is one of his patients. Bill is also a paedophile. During a sleepover he rapes Johnny, an eleven-year-old classmate of his son Billy, and later rapes another boy. When the police come about Johnny, Bill asks whether it is about the other boy, whom they had not mentioned. Asked by Billy, he admits what he has done. Trish takes the children to her parents in Florida.
Those parents, Lenny and Mona, have separated after forty years without divorcing. Lenny says he wants to be alone, tries an affair with a neighbour, and finds he feels nothing.
In the last scene the family sits together in the parents' Florida flat. Trish carries on as if nothing has happened, Lenny and Mona trade barbs across the table, and Helen, having heard about Kristina and the doorman, is finally inspired to write. The final word is Billy's: he proudly tells the family he has reached a milestone of puberty.
Starring
Jane Adamsas Joy Jordan
The youngest sister, gentle and directionless, whose every attempt at a better life, from a new job to a new lover, goes wrong.
Joy Jordan’s story
Joy is past thirty, writes songs that go nowhere, sells over the telephone, and hears from Trish how worried everyone is about her. She breaks up with Andy, a co-worker, who calls her shallow and keeps the gift he had made for her; a few days later he takes his own life. She quits and crosses a picket line to teach English to immigrants, who do not like her. Vlad, a Russian taxi driver from her class, drives her home and sleeps with her, then disappears; a woman he lives with attacks her at the school, and in his flat she finds her own stolen guitar and stereo. He talks her into paying five hundred dollars to get them back, and she quits the job. At her parents' table in Florida, Joy offers the toast: 'To happiness.'
Dylan Bakeras Bill Maplewood
Trish's husband, a suburban psychiatrist and a secret paedophile, who rapes two boys.
Bill Maplewood’s story
To Trish, Bill Maplewood is the psychiatrist husband who makes her family perfect, and his son, Billy, brings him his worries. To his own analyst he describes a recurring dream of shooting strangers in a park. He is a paedophile. When Billy's eleven-year-old classmate Johnny comes for a sleepover, Bill rapes him; learning that another classmate, Ronald, is home alone, he rapes him too. When the police come about Johnny, he asks whether this is about Ronald, whose name they have not mentioned. The house is daubed with 'serial rapist'. Out on bail, he answers Billy's questions in tears: he raped the boys, he says, and he would do it again. Trish takes the children to her parents in Florida.
Philip Seymour Hoffmanas Allen
Helen's lonely neighbour and one of Bill's patients, who makes obscene phone calls to women he cannot face in person.
Allen’s story
Allen is a lonely office worker who tells his psychiatrist, Bill, how boring he is. He cannot bring himself to speak to his neighbour Helen; instead he makes obscene phone calls to women, her among them. When Helen calls him back and invites him over, he goes, and she tells him he is not what she imagined; he leaves. Kristina, who lives down the hall, has been trying to ask him out. Over dessert on their date she tells him, in tears, that she killed the doorman, Pedro, after he raped her. Allen goes to her flat and falls asleep beside her. At her parents' table in Florida, Helen plans to set him up with her sister Joy.
Lara Flynn Boyleas Helen Jordan
The middle sister, a celebrated writer envied by everyone, who feels her success is undeserved and longs for something real.
Helen Jordan’s story
Helen has everything her sisters envy, and none of it feels earned. Nobody, she thinks, wants her for herself, and her writing seems false to her; she has begun to think it would ring truer if she had been raped. When an anonymous man makes an obscene call to her flat, she is thrilled by the voice, calls him back and invites him over. It is Allen, the neighbour she has barely noticed, and when he arrives she tells him he is not what she imagined, and he goes. At her parents' table in Florida, she talks about Kristina, the neighbour who killed the building's doorman, is inspired to write again, and plans to set Joy up with Allen.
Cynthia Stevensonas Trish Maplewood
The eldest sister, a contented suburban wife and mother of three who has no idea what her husband is.
Camryn Manheimas Kristina
A lonely neighbour down the hall from Allen, who carries a secret about the building's doorman.
Why it matters
Happiness is about loneliness, and about how far people will go, or fail to go, to be touched by someone. Todd Solondz sets an obscene caller, a woman nobody takes seriously, a wife who suspects nothing and a father who rapes children side by side, and gives each of them the same patient attention. That evenness is what made the film so hard to place. The Sundance festival declined to show it, and October Films, which had helped finance it, dropped it after its parent company objected to the paedophilia storyline; Good Machine released it instead, and at Cannes in 1998 it won the FIPRESCI critics' prize. The discomfort it leaves is deliberate. Bill is a predator, and he is also a father who tells his son the truth when the boy asks. The film does not settle what that means, for him or for the ordinary unhappiness around him.