Directed by:
Todd SolondzScreenplay:
Todd SolondzCinematography:
Maryse AlbertiCast:
Jane Adams, Jon Lovitz, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Dylan Baker, Lara Flynn Boyle, Cynthia Stevenson, Justin Elvin, Lila Glantzman-Leib, Louise Lasser (more)Plots(1)
As disturbingly funny as it is audaciously empathetic, auteur of unease Todd Solondz’s portrait of damaged souls reaching out for connection reveals the existential void underneath middle-class suburban “normalcy”. An extraordinary ensemble cast - including Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jane Adams, Lara Flynn Boyle, Ben Gazzara, and Dylan Baker - embodies an array of loosely connected New Jersey deviants, depressives, and misfits, among them a frustrated phone-sex pest, an all-American dad concealing his pedophilic urges, and a lonely woman with a grisly secret, all of whom want just one thing: to be loved. One of the most controversial films of the 1990s, the unflinching Happiness unnerves precisely because it dares to see the humanity in those most often denied it. (Criterion)
(more)Reviews (1)
A film that's definitely not easy to digest, simply because it delves into our, or in this case, American, privacy. This is happening there, even though we don't know about it, or we ourselves know very well that we're doing something like that. Everyone finds their happiness in different places, and sometimes that happiness is quite distorted. Todd Solondz delivers it naturally and with immense gravity.
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