Days of Happiness
Director(s): Chloé Robichaud
Film description: Emma, a talented conductor and rising star on the Montreal stage, has a complicated relationship with her father and agent Patrick. She must confront her emotions and decide if she wants to succeed in navigating her career and her romantic relationship with Naëlle, a newly separated cellist and mother of a young boy.
Programmers notes: Step aside, Xavier Dolan: U.S. audiences need to pay more attention to Chloé Robichaud. Her assured 2012 feature debut Sarah Prefers to Run, a nuanced character study of a McGill University track star whose life is on the brink of collapse, established her as an important new voice in both Quebecoise and queer cinema. A decade later, Robichaud and Sarah star Sophie Desmarais have reunited for this next-level brooding drama set in the world of modern classical music. Despite its milieu and lesbian orchestra-conductor protagonist, Days of Happiness has more in common aesthetically with The Piano Teacher than Tár. However, as the film digs deeper into the relationship between Desmarais’ character and her father, a domineering figure who also acts as her agent, a more resonant cinematic precedent comes into focus: the fierce and fiery interpersonal dramas of Maurice Pialat. In a word: masterful.
— Eric Allen Hatch
Writer(s): Chloé Robichaud
Producer(s): Pierre Even, Item 7
Editor(s): Yvann Thibaudeau
Cinematographer(s): Ariel Méthot
Country of origin: Canada
Principal cast: Sophie Desmarais, Sylvain Marcel
Language: French
Year: 2023
