In many ways Happy Few is a quintessentially French film. It’s languid in form, talky nature by nature, elevates essentially bourgeois concerns to a state of high drama, and features copious amounts of nudity and sex. I list these aspects because in a sense they prevent Happy Few from being a great film. But to argue that this is a total waste of time would be a little disingenuous.

Hanging heavily in Happy Few’s favour are the characters it portrays. Indulgent middle class creatives they may be, but all four of them ring true. Director Antony Cordier wrote the film with Julie Peyr – the two having previously worked together on the adapted screenplay for 2005’s Cold Showers – and you can’t help but feel that Peyr’s input has helped round out the females so well.

The resultant film perhaps doesn’t amount to as much as its makers desired, but it’s nevertheless an engaging trip into the lives of two couples that decide to share their partners on an ongoing basis. What starts off as a lot of fun inevitably leads to jealousy, insecurity and a great deal of personal pain. It’s a tale that’s been told before but eschews cliché by never descending into histrionics or violence, preferring instead to mine its drama through the spiralling interactions of the protagonists.

The quartet at the centre of the film artfully bring their unique characters to life. Marina Fois perhaps has the most to do as slightly manic jewellery designer, Rachel, but she’s matched by an underplaying Elodie Bouchez, who effortlessly magnetises the alluring, luscious Teri. The gents at times perhaps take a slight back seat, but prove no less effective and work an almost subtextual physical menace. Nicolas Duvauchelle has a history of playing dangerous and broods engagingly, but its Roschedy Zem who achieves the greater impact, a scene involving an axe and a ping pong table providing some darkly funny physical release.

It’s physical release of a different type that dominates much of the running time, as the performers engage in a ridiculous amount of simulated sex. To the filmmakers’ credit it only occasionally gets tiresome, perhaps because it’s so often backhandedly humorous, or perhaps because the graphic nature has you wondering whether it’s actually simulated after all. If nothing else, the sex is really the film’s action scenes – open to confusing strife and unintentional comedy (for the characters, not the film) – encapsulating the ridiculous nature of the situation these four normal people have willingly engaged in.

Still, for all its effortless drama and easy pleasures, you can’t help but feel Happy Few could have been better. The characters may seem real but the jeopardy never actually arrives, a tension-heightening late revelation neutered by the fact that an earlier development no longer rings true. Some complications come through the couples’ kids, who are pushed to the sidelines, but these youngsters don’t feel like real people – just cardboard-cut warning signs that the adults choose to ignore. Also, while the main characters are balanced well, there’s a lingering suspicion that things may have worked better if the film had focussed more on one protagonist (Rachel is really the film’s centre, but all four peddle voiceovers at different times).

It means Happy Few works best as an effortless time passer that never quite engages on a deeper level. There’s plenty to like – from the flowing dialogue to the naturalism displayed by both the cast and the filmmakers (Nicolas Gaurin’s cinéma verite style cinematography being particularly good) – and this is one of the better flicks you’ll see about sex, but Happy Few could have done with a little more conviction when trying to nail its message to the wall.


I say: A capable, stylish piece of filmmaking, Happy Few needed some more depth at the scripting stage to make it truly great.

See it for: The four central characters and the actors who play them. And yes, rightly or wrongly, there’s a lot of sex.