Clea DuVall’sHappiest Seasonis the best kind of bait-and-switch. It lures you in with its premise of a lesbian couple needing to pretend their straight over the holidays so that the more conservative family won’t raise any fuss, so you think, “Ah, well, it’s set during a cheerful time, there’s a big secret, I assume there will be lots of farcical confusion as they attempt to maintain this ruse,” and instead DuVall and co-writerMary Hollandhit you with a far more thoughtful story about what it means to accept another person, not just in terms of their sexuality, but for all the baggage they bring with them. The film still offers some really big laughs (many of them also courtesy of Holland), but at its heart,Happiest Seasonis a deft romance that provides some unexpected texture to the family drama.
Abby (Kristen Stewart) and Harper (Mackenzie Davis) have been dating for about a year. Abby isn’t much for the holidays, but Harper impulsively asks her to come visit with her family. Abby, who lost her own parents when she was nineteen, decides to come, but on the drive over learns that Harper has stayed closeted and her parents think that Abby is just a friend/roommate. Harper explains that her father Ted (Victor Garber) is running for mayor and needs the support of a major donor, so if they just playact as hetero during the holidays, Harper will reveal the truth afterwards. However, as Abby gets an up-close look at Harper’s family, she sees that having a gay daughter would probably be the least of their dysfunctions.
Some may look atHappiest Seasonand wonder why Abby would want to have anything to do with Harper or her family, but if you buy Abby and Harper as a couple (and Stewart and Davis have good enough chemistry to make that case), then this is a fairly realistic situation. I personally like my in-laws a bunch, but I know not everyone is so lucky, andHappiest Seasonwisely pulls back to show that Harper’s mom Tipper (Mary Steenburgen) is kind of intense, there’s a serious rivalry between Harper and her sister Sloane (Alison Brie), and her other sister Jane (Holland) just wants to play peacemaker for the whole family.Happiest Seasonwisely understands that while Abby may want to spend the rest of her life with Harper, she needs to understand that it also means spending that life with Harper’s family, who demand a level of perfect presentation that has created some serious fault lines beneath a pleasant façade.
And yet DuVall handles this heavy material with a light touch. She shootsHappiest Seasonmore like a Nancy Meyers movie with brightly lit spaces and perfect kitchens rather than a serious family drama. There were times watchingHappiest Seasonwhere I even felt a bit of melancholy knowing that in the year of COVID, I wouldn’t get to spend the holidays with my relatives. Even though Harper’s family can be a bit much, the film still appreciates and respects them as a family despite their dysfunction. You want to go on the ice-skating trip. You want to make that ill-advised, last-minute journey to the mall.Happiest Season’s wisdom is that it knows family isn’t perfect but that you want to be a part of it all the same.
By putting the focus more on family than on hiding Abby and Harper’s romance (the gun in the first act that has to go off in the third act),Happiest Seasonmanages to be light and frothy while still having some surprising depth. The movie still manages to get some big laughs from Holland as well asDan Levy, who plays Abby’s gay friend John, while balancing it out with believable scenarios from the rest of the family. It seems clear that DuVall and Holland didn’t want to make a story about how it’s wacky to pretend to be closeted, but instead wanted to tell a story about not hiding who you are in any way, not just your sexuality.
Happiest Seasonis not the movie I expected, and I’m grateful for that because the movie I expected would not have been as good. Like she showed with her previous feature,The Intervention, DuVall has a knack for thoughtful ensemble dramas that don’t lose sight of their comic beats or deeper emotional moments.Happiest Seasondoesn’t seek to upend the holiday drama, but it uses a simple premise to get to a much richer story about the power of acceptance that we all need.
