Raindance Film Festival review – Our Happy Place
Raya (Raya Miles) is carer for her bedridden partner Paul (Paul Bickel) – and they have (or she has) made a decision that they should go through this difficult time of their lives, which may coincide with covid lockdown in the wider world, in their happy place … a cabin in the woods, with most mod cons. At first, you have questions about why the couple would put themselves so far out of reach of doctors – though the pandemic might explain something – and even Raya’s zoom pal Amy (Tracie Thoms, a handily lively remote presence) questions the wisdom of taking such a lonely, heavy course. But with a (terminally?) ill Paul requiring round the clock care, no one is going to quiz Raya too hard about decisions which might not entirely be hers. And she has other problems, which gradually become more pressing and thoroughly disorienting – no matter what anti-sleepwalking measures she takes, she keeps waking up in the woods, usually in shallow depressions with a spade nearby. Is she being taken or taking herself to her own grave?
Written and directed by Miles and Bickel, Our Happy Place is a crack-up-in-isolation film – with jarring ellipses as the worn-down carer understandably loses tack of time – which slowly morphs into a ghost story, with a strong element of punishment being visited on the most fragile. It occasionally gets too broad – a levitating axe could come in from another movie – and a significant clue is signposted early on which sets up last-reel revelations which come in flashbacks and force viewers to reassess their idea of why this region is anyone’s happy place. Miles has to carry the film just as her character has to bear many burdens and gives a remarkable, compelling performance – even if at least one crucial question is necessarily left unresolved in a spooky coda.
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