Review of “Happy Endings”
Using multiple storylines and idiosyncratic style, this is a sometime rambling and mostly compassionate study of the games people play. And yes, the many endings are happy!
Mamie and Charley are step-siblings, and Mamie holds a secret about their past. She is being blackmailed by a creepy wannabe filmmaker who threatens to expose her unless she cooperates with his plan to get a film scholarship. Mamie goes along with his scheme and enlists her boyfriend – an illegal Mexican immigrant and masseur – to help. Charley is living with his gay partner Gil, and they are best friends with a lesbian couple whom they suspect has tricked them into having Gil’s son. Charley also runs a restaurant where you’ll find Otis. He’s the rich son of Frank, and both father and son fall prey to scheming singer Jude. With a jolting start, the film rolls through the indulgent L.A. lives of these people, cutting in and out as they deceive, leave, lie and love.
Don Roos gives us flashes of brilliance in both his writing and direction. But these insights are moments of clever line delivery rather than characterisation, and you can’t help but feel that everyone in this story comes from the same bottle of thin ink. The mood is patchy - oscillating between corny comedy and brutal realism – but perhaps that’s just life in L.A? It’s also too long, and could do with a great deal of the ‘filmmaking’ sub-plot removed. It’s the weakest part of the story, and a self-indulgent dig that pulls down the middle act of the film. Yet despite all this, there is something lifelike, familiar and warm about the film: perhaps a recognition that none of us inhabit a single grand narrative, but are constantly ebbing and flowing between those we love and those we cannot avoid.
The style is loose, jumpy and hand-held, with sliding text panels acting as graphic narrator where necessary. The big cast is in good form with the material they’ve been given. Lisa Kudrow is brittle as the under-confident Mamie, Steve Coogan gently moving as her sensitive and mildly paranoid stepbrother, and Maggie Gyllenhaal superbly seductive and manipulative as the sleazy manhunter (watch out for more from her). It’s worth a viewing to see where West Coast indie-film is at, unless you like your films short, sharp and steady.
Rating:
Leave a Reply