Life During Wartime

It's hard to believe that it's been over a decade since Todd Solondz won the International Critics' prize at the Cannes Film Festival for his wry, provocative Happiness. Even then, that uneasy examination of sexual desire in American suburbia showed a great progression from his promising Welcome to the Dollhouse days. And though Solondz returned to the festival circuit with Storytelling and Palindromes, comparisons between Happiness and his most recent effort are inevitable. But Life During Wartime revisits Solondz's unsettling terrain with new maturity.

Separated from her incarcerated husband Bill (Ciarán Hinds), Trish (Allison Janney) is about to be married again. Bill is a pedophile, so Trish couldn't be more excited to have Harvey (Michael 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 (Shirley Henderson), is also haunted by ghosts of lovers past. On leave from her degenerate husband, Allen (Michael Kenneth 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.

Whether it's viewed as a late-coming sequel to Happiness or a resurrection of its characters with different actors, Life During Wartime is classic Solondz storytelling. The cast play their roles with subtlety and measure from a screenplay wrought with both sadness and humour. For the uninitiated, Life During Wartime is funny and morbid in its realism. For long-time fans of the cult filmmaker, it speaks to the sense of play and the strength of one of the most original voices in American filmmaking.

Cameron Bailey