Happiest Season

 

Writer/Director Clea DuVall's holiday rom-com Happiest Season (Hulu) is delivered beautifully wrapped in chintz and tinsel but the usual epigrams about the magic of Christmas and love and family have been replaced with sermonettes about good and bad choices -- and I'm down with the change.

DuVall has not completely scrubbed romance out of the rom-com; she's written a pretty hot pairing with Kristen Stewart's Abby and Aubrey Plaza's Riley, chemistry that is more intense than that between Stewart's Abby and her lover Harper (Mackenzie Davis). I think that's deliberate. It seems DuVall has more on her mind than heat.

Harper, who hides her sexuality from her family, brings "roommate" Abby home with her from Pittsburgh for the holidays. She has asked Abby, who is openly lesbian, to keep their secret until she can tell her parents about them after the holidays. Dad is running for mayor, Mom is a control freak, older sister is a disapproving bitch, younger sister is a flake, and on and on. Harper has chosen the path around all of this stress and gets Abby to agree to play along, which she does, reluctantly, and almost immediately regrets it.

What gives the film its freshness and weight is DuVall's commitment to this idea of choices. Our lives are a succession of them. Some get buried, some we outrun and some catch up with us. We choose to pursue. We choose to conceal. We choose to compete. We choose to deceive. And it seems DuVall is saying we choose to love. Which brings us back to Abby and Riley, the "couple" many in the audience might wish would be because Riley is lovely, grounded, out and proud. But Abby has made her choice, and it is not for this woman who seems to get her. She's chosen someone who will take more time. That's new and is as far from the squishiness of "You had me at hello" as one can get.

In the end, after all of the shouting and tussling and accusations and denials and tears we see a frightened family that has chosen to live in fear of one another for forever and they promise to stop. Now that's one hell of a Christmas message.