There is a more interesting story lurking within Jan-Eric Mack’s “A Happy Family” than the one actually being told. At times, the Swiss filmmaker teases the possibility that the conventional narrative shown thus far might break into a bold, daring twist. It’s a promise unfulfilled, however, and those glimpses of something thornier and more daring ultimately come to seem like signs of a filmmaker not in total control of his argument. The first Swiss film to ever play in the Crystal Globe competition of the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, “A Happy Family” is a custody drama that turns out to be more interested in the “drama” part of the phrase, at the expense of plausibility.
Still, Anna Schinz impresses from the get-go as Nicole “Niki” Hofer, a single mother of two already struggling to satisfy child protection services in the film’s opening scene. DP Yunus Roy Imer previously shot “System Crasher”, Nora Fingscheidt’s explosive portrait of a difficult child navigating the foster system, and the same naturalism and attention to the slightest mood shifts is on display here. But what Mack actually aims to show through this aesthetic is less clear.
It is obvious in the scene that Niki loves her children, but it is odd that she is making them eat cereal without milk in front of the case worker who is observing them that morning. Perhaps the visit was unannounced; even so, Niki’s lack of preparation remains rather confusing when we learn in the next scene that she’s had several visits from social services already. This time around, she is even told that her youngest is getting sick and struggling to focus at school due to malnutrition. The stakes are already high.
Niki works two jobs — in a laundry plant and a bar — and money is tight. But when tragedy very nearly strikes and the kids accidentally set fire to the flat while she is at work, the film itself is not at pains to identify economic precarity as the true cause of the disaster. In a meeting with the case workers who place Niki’s children in foster care following the incident, the angry mother explains that she did not receive her daughter’s distressed phone calls because her cellphone battery was dead at the time. This excuse is rendered all the more shocking when Niki blames her children for the catastrophe: Her phone was out of juice because the kids played too many games on it earlier that day.
The filmmaking, however, does not interrogate or even acknowledge Niki’s lack of self-awareness. More interested in the mechanics of melodrama than in evolving a robust perspective or commentary on its protagonist, “A Happy Family” instead builds a comic rhythm in the back-and-forth between the defensive mother and her interlocutors. The scene ends with a hard cut as Niki lurches at one of the caseworkers, and the rest of the film maintains this lighthearted tone as she excitedly embarks on a wild adventure to get back to (and eventually kidnap!) her children.
However this levity continues to jar with Niki’s immaturity, in that scene and beyond; even so, her juvenile lack of perspective is dramatically compelling. There are times when “A Happy Family” looks like it might not be the familiar tale of a hard-done-by mother fighting the system, but rather an interrogative character piece. As it goes on, the film reveals through intriguing details of dialogue and performance the profound personality flaws of a protagonist who initially seems less dangerous than she turns out to be. On several occasions, Mack’s filmmaking does point out that Niki is going too far: Some of the most high-octane and exciting moments in her incredibly irresponsible mission are scored by ominous melodies that sharply contrast with her enthusiasm.
But Mack and his co-writers — including Schinz — never quite join the dots. Although everything suggests that Niki, in her reckless behavior, is at least partially responsible for her own situation, “A Happy Family” stops short of actually engaging with this idea. The film instead concludes with Niki’s banal statement on poverty pushing people to extremes — which isn’t entirely borne out by the reality of the story. Another recent film that explored remarkably similar dramatic and thematic territory, Daisy-May Hudson’s “Lollipop”, better humanized and problematized its complex female protagonist, situating her plight within a wider socioeconomic context, while never losing sight of the specifics of her experience and personality.
Here, Niki’s impulsivity is romanticized, her lack of foresight excused, her temper explained away: The only way to make sense of the film’s perspective on her is to imagine her as the cliché of the working-class mum with a heart of gold, but who just doesn’t know any better. It is to Schinz’s credit that Niki ultimately comes across as a much more human and interesting figure than that.
