Jenny has a tendency to get wildly drunk and her whole life is a bit of a mystery to her brother. Nonetheless, Kelly (played by the marvelous Melanie Lynskey) takes pity on her bizarre sister-in-law and entrusts her son to her. Jenny takes care of the baby just fine, enlisting the help of her friend Cameron (Lena Dunham). The two women gradually befriend Kelly, who became a stay-at-home mom after the birth of her baby and has been struggling to find time to write a follow-up to her successful first novel. Jenny and Cameron encourage her to take a stand and carve out some time and space for herself, a subplot that is very sweet and speaks to working mothers everywhere.
Apart from that story line however, Happy Christmas is a bit of a meandering meditation that tries to have a plot but doesn't really succeed in executing it. Writer-director-actor Joe Swanberg (he plays Jeff) is an extremely indie director, one of the proponents of the mumblecore movement, who makes movies that are mostly improvised and don't have to be tightly scripted or shot expensively. This movie feels extremely low budget, and the old-fashioned opening credits initially confused me because I thought this might be a period piece set in the 70s or 80s instead of in the present day. It doesn't feel like a film for casual audiences but for indie enthusiasts or people who enjoy the work of the admittedly fantastic Kendrick and Lynskey.
If you do watch Happy Christmas, stay all the way to the end of the closing credits, as they feature a very extended scene that was cut out of the middle of the movie. It features Lynskey, Dunham, and Kendrick, sitting around and improvising their way through a very funny scene that showcases what this movie was all about. If the movie had just consisted of these three ladies sitting around and talking, in the vein of the epic conversations contained in the Before Sunrise trilogy, it would have been truly special.
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