‘Happy Face’ Review: Alternative Therapy
#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Happy Face’ Review: Alternative TherapyIn Alexandre Franchi’s film, a 19-year-old crashes a support group and leads its members to personal breakthroughs.Robin L’Houmeau in “Happy Face.”Credit…Dark Star PicturesDec. 31, 2020, 7:00 a.m. ETHappy FaceDirected by Alexandre FranchiDrama1h 40mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.A defiant, generically unclassifiable film that dares viewers to question its sensitivity, “Happy Face” centers on a 19-year-old named Stan (Robin L’Houmeau) who wraps gauze around his head and joins a support group for people with atypical facial appearances. When the assertiveness exercises proposed by the group’s leader, Vanessa (Debbie Lynch-White), don’t do much good, Stan takes command, illustrating for his new friends that cognitive behavioral therapy isn’t nearly as cathartic as dumping trash on gawking restaurant patrons. Stan’s vision for the cohort is a cross between a pushy version of the talking cure and a fight club.Set in Montreal, “Happy Face” foregrounds actors like Alison Midstokke — who has a rare condition that affects the bones and tissues of the face — playing a hand model who sets her sights on full-body shoots, and E.R. Ruiz, as a police officer whose appearance changed as a result of a car crash during a pursuit. They project nuanced, charismatic mixes of confidence and wounded pride. But is it problematic to make a movie in which they need an implausibly poised impostor to lead them to personal breakthroughs, using character-building lessons derived from Dungeons & Dragons?[embedded content]The director, Alexandre Franchi, who wrote the script with Joëlle Bourjolly, hedges against that charge by drawing a strained comparison between Stan and Don Quixote, and by giving Stan unresolved challenges of his own. (His mother, played by Noémie Kocher, with whom he is disturbingly close — she is shown scrubbing him in the bathtub — is dying of multiple brain tumors.)“Happy Face” dares to be distinctive, and that’s something, even if the behavior — particularly Stan’s — isn’t always convincing.Happy FaceNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. Watch through virtual cinemas.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
