In the bleak and snowy hinterlands of Norway, the simple-minded Kaja (Agnes Kittelsen) smiles relentlessly as she desperately tries to put a positive spin on her disintegrating marriage. Her unkind husband (Joachim Rafaelsen) no longer wants to have sexual relations with her and encourages their son, Theodor (Oskar Hernaes Brandsø), to join him in abusing her. Still, the status quo is superficially maintained until a cosmopolitan couple—Elisabeth (Maibritt Saerens) and Sigve (Henrik Rafaelsen)—and their adopted African son (Ram Shihab Ebedy) move in next door and the two families get far too cozy. Festering wounds erupt, and secrets are revealed.
Despite the story's clichés, the acting is superb. The actors manage to make their narcissistic characters simpatico, and that's no small feat. Whatever her intellectual limitations, Kittelsen's Kaja is tormented over her failing marriage yet a true believer in family. As her husband, a self-hating closet homosexual, Joachim Rafaelsen is a cauldron of conflicting emotion. Saerens brings a steely intelligence and a sardonic edge to Elisabeth, and Henrik Rafaelsen, as Sigve, forges a three-dimensional figure whose sexual adventures with Kaja express genuine affection for her and, at the same time, rage toward his wife, whom he loves.
Brandsø and Ebedy, also interesting actors, play the two young boys whose relationship is troubling. Already damaged by his twisted family life, Theodor is one angry child, though his fury is largely suppressed even as he engages in a sadistic master-slave game with the neighbors' Ethiopian son. The latter, a gentle soul, plays along without any understanding of what's happening. None of the adults do anything about this brutal sport; indeed, it's not clear they're aware of it, though toward the end of the film, Elisabeth pushes Theodor's face into a bowl of cottage cheese as an act of revenge, or so one assumes.
That lack of clarity is one of several stumbling blocks in this film. Heavy-handed irony is another. At moments interspersed throughout, the camera zeroes in on four young singers whose sincere and genial songs underscore the four parents' misery depicted in the previous scenes. These musical snippets are otherwise unaccounted for.
Still, screenwriter Ragnhild Tronvoll and director Anne Sewitsky, making their feature-film debuts, show promise. The movie is tightly structured, with a momentum that builds. It should be noted that "Happy, Happy" won a World Cinema Grand Jury Prize at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.
Genre: Drama
Director: Anne Sewitsky
Writer: Ragnhild Tronvoll
Starring: Agnes Kittelsen, Joachim Rafaelsen, Maibritt Saerens, Henrik Rafaelsen, Oskar Hernaes Brandsø, Ram Shihab Ebedy
