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Talk about your non-traditional casting. Or your chance to play film director and figure out if you'd like the actor from column A or the one from column B.
Column A would be Todd Solondz's 1998 movie "Happiness," while column B is his 2010 release, "Life During Wartime." The second is a sequel-variation on the first, with the same characters recast regardless of such details as race or age.
In 1998, we slotted "Happiness" as No. 7 on our top 10 list for the year although we cautioned:
"This movie is definitely not for everyone, especially those offended by a film about a pedophile that refuses to merely paint him as a monster. 'Happiness' (also written by Mr. Solondz) may be the most subversive film of the year, starting with its title.
- Starring: Allison Janney, Ciaran Hinds, Shirley Henderson.
- Rating: Not rated but adult in nature due to sex, nudity, adult language and thematic material.
"But it also takes up residence in your brain and refuses to leave -- a sure sign that it strikes a chord, however dissonant, with its depiction of loneliness and dysfunction in America. The ensemble cast includes Dylan Baker, Cynthia Stevenson and Lara Flynn Boyle."
Now, swap out those three for Ciaran Hinds, Allison Janney and Ally Sheedy, for starters. Then, keep the dysfunction but weave in notions about forgiveness and ghosts.
Some characters are dead, others might as well be. "Just keep pretending like before," says a man whose family told everyone he had died. "If you pretend enough," he says, not bothering to finish the fatalistic sentence.
"Life During Wartime" opens with an anniversary dinner between Allen (Michael Kenneth Williams) and his wife, Joy (Shirley Henderson), that quickly sours. When a waitress recognizes Allen's voice, a sign that he hasn't stopped making obscene phone calls, Joy insists he doesn't do that any more. "We even threw out the phone book."
Her sister Trish (Ms. Janney), whose pedophile husband went to prison, is living in Florida and dating the divorced Harvey (Michael Lerner) who is refreshingly normal. It's so good, she tells him, to be with someone who's not "sicko-pervy."
She's a little pervy herself, however, when she describes her reaction to Harvey to her son, Timmy (Dylan Riley Snyder), who is preparing for his bar mitzvah. At least she acknowledges how inappropriate it is.
"Oh my God, what is wrong with me? How can I be talking about this with you?" Yes, how can you be?
"Life During Wartime" also revisits Trish's former husband, now played by Mr. Hinds; Trish and Joy's sister, a self-centered, successful screenwriter (Ms. Sheedy) who often is accused of being condescending, because she is; along with assorted children, specters and strangers in the night.
Mr. Solondz has pulled off a bold experiment that, frankly, works best if you reacquaint yourself with the "Happiness" households and previous perversions and peccadillos.
Substituting Mr. Hinds for Mr. Baker changes the vibe of the character from seemingly all-American husband and psychiatrist to an Irishman who naturally looks like he harbors a sinister secret. Or maybe a stint in prison will do that to a man.
The boy about to mark his bar mitzvah is simply too naive in these days of the Internet and stranger-danger instruction. It doesn't matter that, with his freckled face and dated haircut, he looks as if he was transported from the 1960s.
However, this dark, sometimes comic look at prisoners of love and life works better than it should for a couple of reasons: the caliber of the cast, which also includes Charlotte Rampling as a bitter barfly; little comic moments dealing with restaurants and karaoke; and the outrageous ways characters speak or behave.
It's like waiting to see what the inappropriate or tasteless party guest or office mate will say or do next. Your jaw may drop, but you won't be able to look away or tune it out, although you will be relieved when he goes home.
Opens Friday at the Regent Square Theater in Edgewood.
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