Oh, to have been a fly on the wall when Todd Solondz's Happiness first premiered at Cannes. I wonder what it was like. Were they shocked by something so nihilistic and uncomfortable that even today it seems like the most cringe-inducing movie ever made? Or did they hate it simply because it dealt frankly with issues like pedophilia? Yeesh...and I thought Solondz's Wiener-Dog (2016) was a tough sit. But I think this remains his most challenging and devastating film. Solondz's menagerie of human grotesques--child molesters, murderers, sadomasochistic perverts--all seem vividly realized and, perhaps most disturbing of all, sympathetic. The most unlikable characters in the film are, respectively, a wife-beater who entraps one of the main characters with an affair, and one of that woman's sisters who wishes she had been raped as a children so her writing could have more authenticity. I'm especially curious with this last one: she seems the progenitor of the self-satisfied and snooty film students in Wiener-Dog. I love how Solondz's biggest beef seems to be with other artists. Not that I blame him. Did you see some of the films that got passed off as great this past New York Film Festival?
9/10
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