When a family gathers to sell their home, the reunion turns sour with the arrival of some shocking news.
Review by
Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Haroula Rose
Starring: Josh Radnor, Becky Ann Baker, Chandra Russell, Rob Huebel, John
Ashton
Perhaps the institution of family is a concept which doesn't bear close
scrutiny. After all, you choose your friends and sexual partners, but,
just like your looks and height, family is what you're given and
subsequently stuck with. Anthropological study maintains that the family
construct can be traced to the earliest stage of human evolution, a
Darwinian era where kinship ties were necessary for survival. But that
was then. Our tribal ancestors may have had little option but to
cooperate, but the modern family has no such urgency (in fact, with
76% of female murder victims over the last 15 years in the UK being
killed by their male partner or other family members, one wonders wtf is going on with the traditional family unit), yet we
persist, leading to the common appropriation of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina
principle, repeated somewhat inevitably at the opening of
All Happy Families, Renaissance woman Haroula Rose's (with co-writer
Coburn Goss) sophomore feature: "All happy families are alike.
Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." The aphorism winsomely
suggests that all families are miserable, but in an idiosyncratic
fashion (a distinction indicatively consolidated by the full stop used
above, rather than the semi-colon in the original).
We open on what (oh god no) looks for all the world like a particularly
messy endoscopy, but which actually turns out to be a camera pushed down
a kitchen pipe. Graham Landry (Josh Radnor, schlubbier and more
handsome than his How I Met Your Mother era) has called
the plumber in, and it turns out the problem is that a rat has gone and
died somewhere in the waterworks (poor thing). The metaphor is clear:
within this ostensibly calm domestic arrangement, there is something
rotten. There's a rat in the kitchen, what is he gonna do? Well, he
could call on his brother Will (Rob Huebel), who owns the house,
but there is unresolved rivalry there, seeing as Will is semi-famous as
a soap opera regular and Graham is an out of work actor. His mother Sue
(Becky Ann Baker) has just retired, and, unbeknownst to Graham,
has been groped by a colleague at her leaving do. His dad (John Ashton, RIP) is a pain in the arse. Best to forget about it, smoke some more
weed chased with Cheetos, before attempting to rekindle a relationship
with old crush Dana (Chandra Russell).
The opening credits roll over transitions of a family home: framed
photos of gormless kids, heights pencilled into the doorways, all upon
anaglypta wallpaper (surely the most vivid signifier of the
stereotypical American household). As the family reconvene for a meeting
which will broker secrets and lies, the scene is set for sit-com
melodrama. However, while the title of Rose's film infers familial
relations, what All Happy Families is really interested in
is evaluation of masculinity, with nearly all the narrative's male
characters (discounting the rat-identifying plumber, who functions as
Graham's fairy godfather) depicted as displaced and struggling to keep
pace with a world which no longer affords them an automatic largesse, a
theme of perceived emasculation which is vocalised when Graham's father
snaps at his trans niece/granddaughter, "no wonder he wants to be a
girl."
The film's representation of its trans character is refreshingly
uncomplicated, however, with Evie not defined by her transition: she is
an otherwise unremarkable kid having to deal with the priapic ego of her
father. Will is the sort of person who rewatches his own sitcoms, loves
being recognised in the street, and who has been accused of soliciting
the actor who plays his daughter on the show. As the media fall out from
this indiscretion takes hold ("They can’t do the show without me," Will
insists. "That's what Roseanne thought," comes the pithy rejoinder), it
is paralleled by the experiences of his own mother, who wrestles with
how to deal with her own assault (I see this happen in my own place of
work All The Time: women sexually approached but in a way that could be
considered minor, and so the affected feel reluctant to do anything
about it. It's a disgrace). Graham has a sad sack charisma, but he
wallows in his life of self-pity in a recognisably entitled manner which
society accepts when it's a man doing it but struggles to see the
romanticised charm when it's a woman.
As perhaps validated by the thank you credit to Alexander Payne, there
is something resolutely old fashioned about
All Happy Families, as its shares that auteur's fealty to the talky, bittersweet indie
comedy which characterised the genre in the '90s, but which is missed in
today's cultural landscape. The performances seem lived in and convince,
while the film is in no rush to reach a denouement.
All Happy Families is too warm hearted to not finish on a
smile, yet as the credits roll over an outwardly happy (and doggy)
ending for Graham, there is the lingering sense that the family unit has
been fractured, and that the cracks have been simply paved over with the
same cheap wallpaper seen in the opening montage.
All Happy Families is in UK/ROI
cinemas and on VOD from March 14th.
