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Todd Solondz has won a lot of love with Life During Wartime - his sequel to breakthrough film Happiness - and now fans can finally get a taste in trailer form. If ever anyone made bleak hopelessness as funny and charming as Solondz, I have no idea who that person is.
Separated from her incarcerated husband Bill (Hinds), Trish (Janney) is about to be married again. Bill is a pedophile, so Trish couldn't be more excited to have Harvey (Lerner), a "normal" father figure for her two sons. But when Bill is released from prison and the boys finally meet their future stepdad, the family is forced to decide whether to forgive or to forget. Trish's sister, the virginal, angelic Joy (Henderson), is also haunted by ghosts of lovers past. On leave from her degenerate husband, Allen (Williams), and her job at a New Jersey correctional facility, Joy unwittingly leaves behind a trail of shame and exposed secrets wherever she goes. In one of the film's most stylized sequences, the image of Joy walking the dark streets of Miami in her nightgown maintains her innocence against a backdrop of self-affliction and desire.
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More from Life During Wartime
- Reviews: LIFE DURING WARTIME Review
- Reviews: LIFE DURING WARTIME UK DVD Review
- Reviews: TIFF 09: LIFE DURING WARTIME Review
I absolutely love Happiness but unfortunately this left me a little cold. It's not bad in places but isn't nearly as cutting or merciless as it should have been, like Happiness was. Ally Sheedy is great in it, but ultimately I was disappointed.
This is such a great trailer. I think it could be significantly better than the movie simply because of the music and the pastel colors lightening up and contrasting with all the ugliness.
The film is great--funny, unsettling--perhaps the director's best in years. Easily his best-looking. The compositions and colors are gorgeous. If you're a fan I say don't miss it.