The fact that some readers confidently state the presumed political "allegory" of this film (which I frankly can't see) while others criticize it as if it were realistic (what? seven adults confining a girl to a massage parlor against her will?) gives some idea of why it's both interesting and powerful. I was never entirely sure what genre I was in while watching this--comedy? surreal fantasy? social commentary? sit com? romance? absurdist play?--and maybe because of that I never worried about the implications it might have for any of these, nor did I steel myself against its emotional aspects (why bother? it's just a surreal play!). The main focus emerges from this haze of characters and comedic situations about half way through. I'm told that some details early on in the film (the 'girl- friend' and her pampered, insolent, fat, lazy kid) are comments on an increasingly common family phenomenon in China; I wouldn't know. But once the focus settles on the main group of characters, I could not shake the notion that they constitute an absolutely dead-on representation of American bourgeois family life (or perhaps just those I've had experience with!) where each member, with the best of intentions, deceives everyone else in order to protect them from ... what? economic distress? emotional distress? And where emotions and love can only be expressed in the most oblique and often futile ways.
Review of Happy Times
