Acclaimed actress turned filmmaker Clea DuVall helmed Happiest Season (2020); the holiday romantic comedy that broke major ground for the representation of queer women. This has secured Happiest Season a place in history to be sure and it’s likely that for many it will become a staple of the season. This is a film with no other pretensions than to delight an ill represented demographic with inclusion in a major holiday movie.
Beneath the surface Happiest Season isn’t very different from the standard Hallmark movie. The script isn’t very funny and almost none of the characters have any depth beyond their use as narrative mechanisms or as signifiers. The only two scenes with dramatic weight are those between Kristen Stewart (Abby) and Aubrey Plaza (Riley). These two are so good together that by the end of Happiest Season one would rather see Abby end up with Riley than with her terribly toxic girlfriend Harper (Mackenzie Davis).
This has long been the issue with Hollywood’s version of the romantic comedy. An abusive or unhealthy relationship is obtained or preserved when a superior chance of happiness seems so obvious. In the best films of the genre one of the partners either grows beyond their unsavory tendencies or realizes the dangers of their patriarchal views. In Happiest Season Harper achieves nothing remotely similar or equal to that kind of growth. In one sudden gesture Harper expects to repair a relationship with Abby that she, over the course of the film, has irrevocably damaged. That a progressive Christmas movie like Happiest Season couldn’t do more for its genre is ultimately disheartening.
There are somethings to enjoy in this uneven little film though. Aside from Aubrey Plaza, Mary Steenburgen is excellent and very, very funny. Steenburgen plays the mom part big, broad and totally fabulous. I have never seen a movie with Mary Steenburgen where I didn’t enjoy her work immensely. In a film like Happiest Season, where so few actors have any real chemistry, it’s the small turns by people like Aubrey Plaza, Mary Steenburgen and Dan Levy that really carry the audience through the narrative.
Happiest Season wasn’t a complete bomb so there’s a chance that more films of this sort could be made and may even be better. Even with all of the missteps of Happiest Season it does make for a nice little diversion. Hopefully productions like this aren’t just empty gestures by the Hollywood machine to placate a demographic.
