Happy, Happy (2010)

Kaja is an unrelenting cheerful person. She's a teacher. Her husband Eirick is a jerk. For example, he and their son play a silent-treatment game which they know infuriates her. Couple Elisabeth and Sigve move in next door with their adopted African boy Noa. One night, Sigve brings out a box called The Couples Game. Kaja and Eirick have a tough time with the game. Kaja reveals to Sigve that they haven't had sex for a year. Sigve tells her that Elisabeth cheated on him. Sigve and Kaja start a secret affair.This indie is a little bit slow at times. Kaja is a great character. The actors are all good. There is some relationship fun. Then there is one too many reveal twist with Eirick. Instead of emotional intensity, it becomes a sudsy endeavor. I can do without that final twist. The humor doesn't always work.

Well, I'll try to elude subjective views as I lived in Sweden - I know this movie takes place in Norway, but anyone whom has lived in either of these countries would say that they are very similar culturally speaking.So, the main character is Kaja, a young, vivid women living with her husband and son in a remote place. Everything seems to be perfectly normal, in appearance... until a young couple coming from the city moves in next door.And then, the "faithful heterosexual family" norm is all falling apart, everybody is trying to get attention from the wrong person and it results VERY funny and critical regarding the so-called egalitarianism of Scandinavian countries.I recommend this movie to anyone who wants to have a laugh and open its mind.

HAPPY,HAPPY (dir. Anne Sewitsky) The film is an off-beat examination of two failing marriages in a very isolated, wintry, and picturesque area of Norway. An urban professional couple have fled the city with their adopted African son, and they are trying to reestablish their marriage after the wife's infidelity. Their new neighbors are another couple with a young boy, and the husband is a repressed homosexual, and his wife is in denial. This leads to an illicit sexual affair, and the the film documents the couples' dramatic realignment. Several times during the film a 'Greek Chorus' of singers interrupt the drama with Country- Western inflected Negro Spirituals, and both genres are singularly American, and this made me wonder about the director's attitude towards Americans. Is the director asking Norwegian audiences to view the universal problem of sexual infidelity through American eyes? The songs seemed to be selected to suggest 'lost love' or 'longing' which reinforce a major theme of the film, and reminded me of Lindsay Anderson's surrealistic film, O LUCKY MAN, in which Alan Price's combo provided random musical commentary. Another strange or unusual aspect in the film is the treatment of 'Race'. The African child is asked to play a slave by the other young boy. This is rather inexplicable, yet it might be an attempt to demonstrate the child's confusion over his father's sexual identity. This is a thought provoking and strikingly original film, and I highly recommend it.

The original title "Sykt lykkelig" is a nice pun, as "sykt" can be both positive (thus the title meaning "incredibly happy") or negative (more like "happy in a sick way").Indeed this dichotomy runs throughout the movie. Two couples live next door, but their initial attempt to establish a good neighbourhood relationship goes awry, as neither family is as picture-perfect as the facade suggests.Soon enough they find themselves in the middle of an awkward love triangle, almost turning into a double-triangle, and then shortly into partner swapping.In the end the ordeal brings every character back to square one, but with renewed, and this time hopefully complete, awareness of themselves and of their partner. So everything looks the same as before, but something has definitely changed.We're left to wonder who was "happy" and about what and when... And is it supposed to be ironic? I'm not really sure, and it's a positive thing. A movie that keeps me thinking after it's over, with no convoluted gimmicks and with no clean-cut answers is a good movie to me.Sykt lykkelig is a difficult movie to categorize... In a way it's the typical Norwegian "comedy": more awkward than funny, with a persistent serious vibe that runs through the movie but never takes over. So the movie is always enjoyable, even when it could get too heavy-handed, gloomy or sappy. Of course this minimalistic approach can be a negative aspect, depending on the viewer's taste and on his penchant for full-fledged drama or for unrelenting pretentiousness.Just to make two examples: the subplot involving the two kids, with openly racist undertones, is quite perplexing but it's an odd change of pace from the main story. And the confrontation scene between Kaja and Eirik about his "hunting trips" is a farcical tribute to Brokeback Mountain... In order not to talk openly about the topic in front of the kid they switch to a very broken German, which doesn't sound too different from Norwegian, and the key word of the whole scene is still said loud in Norwegian... So much for not upsetting the kid! If it was intentional, it was hilarious.To sum it up "Sykt lykkelig" is a somewhat odd and uneven family "comedrama", Its forte is the absence of maudlin introspection. For once we're just watching the four characters deal with their live and their choices. No preachy message is spoon-fed to us, no easy answers are given... Quite a rare occurrence in such movies.