Happy, Happy: movie review

“Happy, Happy” is a somewhat ironically titled Norwegian film about Kaja (Agnes Kittelsen), a woman who unfailingly looks on the bright side of even the gloomiest events.

Her husband may be sexually unresponsive. Her new neighbors, the archetypal “perfect couple,” turn out not to be so perfect after all. Throughout it all she cultivates her own happiness as a survival strategy, and her dogged uplift is rather touching, perhaps because the alternative is so much worse.

Kittelsen is a funny, expansive actress, and director Anne Sewitsky manages the sad-comic tonal shifts with emotional accuracy. Grade: B+ (Rated R for sexual content, including brief graphic nudity.)