Erotic films: Happiness

This movie’s so good that the audience was laughing its head off in theatres even during the scenes of paedophilia in 1999.

 

The irony of the film Happiness isn’t that it makes fun of paedophilia, among other things, but that the audience also laughs at paedophilia.

Philip Seymour Hoffman portrays a pervert who sexually harasses women over the telephone.

 

Happiness was directed by the controversial Todd Solondz.

 

The film which dares to make fun even of paedophilia

Do you remember when Michael Jackson was accused of sexually harassing a boy? The news shocked the world and Jackson’s career was almost ruined, even if he was considered a big friend of children and the biggest musical star on the planet. Nobody was laughing. Nobody tried to understand him. Nobody believed that he might have been innocent. Sexual harassment of children is a terrible crime. It’s practically the worst felony that can be done any time and anywhere. The many paedophile affairs that have shaken the world have made people want to send these sexually depraved men onto the guillotine or send them to a solitary island where horny natives with penises that are 12 inches (30 centimetres) long could get hold of them. Paedophilia isn’t a joke, ever, not even in a story. Not even in a comedy. Well, if we watch the film Happiness, that’s not the case and what’s even more chilling, it’s not the case even if we look at the reactions of people who watched the film.

Dylan Baker is a pedophile father who has very honest discussions with his son.

 

A paedophile father and his son

Director Todd Solondz, who already thrilled audiences with Welcome to the Dollhouse, proved that paedophiles are ordinary people who can’t help themselves when it comes to their abnormal sexual desires. What’s more, he shows paedophilia through comical eyes, which is a very brave act on one hand and on the other hand a very foolish wish to make the story original, which is nowadays, naturally, very hard to do. Dylan Baker is a married psychiatrist and a father of two. On the outside, he seems a very neat and normal man, but he has one big problem. He’s attracted by very young boys and he masturbates when watching children’s magazines. His eleven year-old son, Rufus Read, is worried because, unlike his classmates, he’s never come yet. Their dialogues always border between paedophilia and an honest discussion between father and son.

Lara Flynn Boyle is a young woman who is extremely turned on when she’s harassed over the telephone.

Sperm squirting out of the ears

Let’s forget about paedophilia and go to the other things, which are just as sharp and the film Happiness delivers them to us. It was the most controversial film made in 1999. Philip Seymour Hoffman is a guy who masturbates when calling unknown women and explains rough and sexually explicit sentences into the receiver. For example: “I’m going to fuck you so hard that sperm is going to be squirting out of your ears.”" One day he stumbles upon Lara Flynn Boyle. She doesn’t hang up but answers that she wants to meet him and allow him to do what he wants. The catch is that Philip Seymour Hoffman is brave only over the telephone, while in person he’s frightened and indecisive. A plump female neighbour is sometimes there for him and she once even admits she killed and hacked up the doorman right after he raped her.

Happiness is definitely not a film for everyone, so we advise it only to the most open viewers.

 

Affair with a Russian emigrant

Happiness, therefore, is a film about paedophilia, masturbation and large female killers. It doesn’t fall on the same shaky and simple ground as There’s Something About Mary and Very Bad Things, bit it stays ironic and very true to life the whole time. This film has a few other stories up its sleeve, like the story about Jane Adams, who plays the sister of Lara Flynn Boyle and the one about the wife of the paedophile Dylan Baker. There’s also the story about a girl who just can’t get the hang of relationships with men. At the start of the film she splits up with Jon Lovitz who then commits suicide, then she leaves her job, secretly fantasises about a music career, gets involved with a Russian emigrant who steals her guitar and radio. Ben Gazzara, who is her father, suddenly leaves her mother one day, his wife Louise Lasser, with whom he had been married for forty years. He spends some time with his mistress who has a stroke, but otherwise he decides to live on his own. There are several stories in this film. The only negative thing is that it’s a bit too long and drags on at times. The congratulations for portraying such daring themes realistically are deserving, but the scene with the dog and perhaps the sequence where a boy experiences an ejaculation for the first time come out a bit cheap. The point is at hand – paedophiles are happy people as well, especially when they’re able to grope small boys. Happiness is a film which tells us that some people unfortunately need very abnormal things to be happy.

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