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| Anna Kendrick stars in "Happy Christmas" |
Before Anna Kendrick dons princess slippers and sings in
the big-budget holiday blockbuster “Into the Woods” coming soon, she played
Jenny, a pretty but aimless 27-year-old prone to bouts of drug and
alcohol-soaked impetuousness in the decidedly low-budget “Happy Christmas,” a
likeable but slight comedy written and directed by Joe Swanberg and now playing
over the Netflix platform.
Swanberg also costars as Jeff, a filmmaker living with novelist
wife Kelly (Melanie Lynskey of TV’s “Two and a Half Men”), in an upper-middle
class house in Chicago. Jenny is Jeff’s sister and arrives fresh from a breakup
ostensibly to spend the holidays. The seemingly wholesome but mischievous sibling,
barely more mature than the fawning couple’s toddler son, quickly makes waves
by getting drunk and passing out at a party, and soon is getting into more
trouble smoking weed and sleeping with the couple’s babysitter.
Swanberg photographs “Happy Christmas” with a hand-held
camera and uses long takes to lend authenticity which is effective. Moreover, the
dialogue is largely improvised, peppered with staples (like, you know,
whatever) of Gen Y speak, for better or worse.
Fans will recognize the style to be consistent with the
rules of mumblecore—an interesting subgenre of independent cinema that “Happy
Christmas” belongs—but it’s not quite enough to fill puddles of emptiness in
story and character development. Not enough is revealed about the people here
for them to be compelling, and background info to flesh out personalities is
absent.
Not all films in this movement are as wispy and wafer-thin—another entry, “The Exploding Girl,” was an expressive masterpiece of long pauses and thoughtful moments of contemplation—but if there’s a secret to the mumblecore movies, it’s that the better ones are enhanced by the minimalist techniques they follow, rather than limited by them.
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