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134 min | USA | 35 mm
main programme
credits
PROD: Good Machine, Killer Films, Ted Hope, Christine Vachon
SALES: Good Machine
SCENARIO: Todd Solondz
CAMERA: Maryse Alberti
EDITOR: Alan Oxman
ARTDIR: Therese Deprez
SOUND: Neil Danzinger, Damien Volpe, Tom Efinger
MUSIC: Robbie Kondor
CAST: Jane Adams, Dylan Baker, Cynthia Stevenson, Lara Flynn Boyle, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jared Harris, Ben Gazzara, Louise Lasser
screenings
29 friday 22:15 Luxor
30 saturday 09:30 Path� 7
31 sunday 14:30 Path� 5
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In the opening scene, the hippy-type Joy deflects the advances of a corpulent admirer. He seems to take it well but then suddenly explodes with fury. The effect of this scene is both alarming and comic, a tone that Todd manages to maintain throughout the film, even though the emphasis for most spectators will be on the alarming. Solondz introduces twelve interlinked characters. Joy has two sisters who are considerably more successful than she is. Trish is a self-satisfied housewife with three children and a husband who is, at first sight, ideal: Bill is a psychiatrist. One of his patients is the chubby Allen, who is obsessed by the third sister Helen, his neighbour and a successful writer. She may have a sizable sexual urgle, but she doesn't even pass the time of day with him. The parents of the three sisters are getting divorced after forty years of marriage. The elegant camerawork and set emphasise the sterility of the New Jersey suburbs. The directing of the actors is especially striking. For instance, the interest of the psychiatrist Bill in a classmate of his little son evokes a very 'uneasy' and superbly directed sequence. 'Solondz will enter and explore those slimy places in the human soul, not only with visual style and black humour, but with consummate delicacy, unflinching intelligence en unpatronising compassion.' (Kay Armitage, Toronto Festival)
Todd Solondz
Todd Solondz (Newark) grew up in what he calls the very banal and aesthetic vacuum of the New Jersey suburbs ('but even a sludge farm can have its charms'), he studied at the University of New York and then made the short film How I Became a Leading Artistic Figure in New York City's East Village Cultural Landscape for the TV show Saturday Night Live. His feature d�but Welcome to the Doll House won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance film festival.
films
How I Became a Leading Artistic Figure in New York City's East Village Cultural Landscape (1986, short), Fear, Anxiety and Depression (1989), Welcome to the Dollshouse (1995), Happiness (1998)
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