Have you ever seen a film which mixes documentary with fiction? Hybrid films, films with documentary and fiction parts or at least performed / acted elements have been around for some time. I'm not enough of a documentary expert to know if this is an increasing trend but in the past few years I've seen a few. From my (extremely limited) experience the combo can spark frissons of excitement and thoughtful layers as in Sarah Polley's autobiographical mystery Stories We Tell. The hybrid approach can also be both fascinating and exhausting simultaneously as with Clio Barnard's The Arbor (2010) in which actors lipsynched to recorded interviews from the actual documentary subjects.
At this year's New Directors / New Films festival, which wraps today in NYC, the hybrid technique (genre?) gets another discussable entry via Happiness Academy...
We follow two female friends Lily (Laure Calamy) and Dominique (Michèle Gurtner) attending a retreat at the European Happiness Academy in Croatia. They're there to learn from an old guru named Rael, who appears via Skype to attendees in conference rooms. Raelian teachings are actually a thing as is the Happiness Academy which is in North America, too (though I was personally unfamiliar prior to this film). Rael claims that his teachings were given to him by extraterrestrial beings. Who cares if that's true or not if they're peaceful and make people happy, right?
As far as I can tell the Raelian Church is a self-help cult with a focus on peace, acceptance, meditation, and what comes across as a free love bent. In one early scene at the retreat we learn that members are encouraged to wear colored bracelets which correlate with their desires (gay, straight, taken - not looking, polyamorous, bisexual, companionship but not sex, etcetera). Lily has trouble picking a color but she's clearly there for love while she works through some personal unhappiness. Both Lily & Dominique are surprised that a famous singer Arnaud is attending and they are immediately on the hunt. As the retreat progress their friendship starts fraying with Arnaud somewhat oblivious to his effect on them. This romantic drama -- or is tragicomedy? -- plays out over and inbetween Raelian celebrations, somewhat interesting classes, and Skype sessions with the guru as well as interstitials with couples attending the event and doing meditation and role play exercizes.
Though combining documentary and fiction is a perfectly reasonable approach to this sort of topic -- in fact, in concept I was totally there for it -- the overall feeling Happiness Academy prompted in me was the desire to shout "just pick one!" to the directors Alain Della Negre and Kaori Kinashata. But perhaps the length and not the combination was the problem. You'll rarely hear me call a film too short but at only 65 minutes, the romantic entanglements felt (slightly) undernourished while the information a documentary would normally apart on a subject as rich as a self-help retreat with extraterrestial beliefs and polyamorous tendencies was incomplete at best and incredibly vague at worst.
Grade: B-/C+
P.S. Arnaud Fleurent-Didier, as it turns out, is actually a famous French singer and was playing himself or at least a version thereof in the film. Here is one of his music videos and I share it because Isabelle Huppert kicks the video off in conversation with Arnaud...
and here's one of his hits " Je vais au cinéma" (I go to the movies) which is even mentioned in this movie if I recall correctly...