Happy Here and Now

Drawn into a menacing underground world of the New Orleans elite while searching for her missing sister, Muriel (Shalom Harlow), Amelia (Liane Balaban) is aided in her investigation by ex-CIA agent Bill (Clarence Williams III) in this effort from Nadja director Michael Almereyda. Soon discovering ...more

Michael Almereyda's Happy Here and Now may not be as conceptually brilliant as his modern-day take on Hamlet, but it is a film full of interesting ideas. As in Nadja, Almereyda takes a familiar genre plot line (a girl searches for her missing sister) and proceeds to subvert audience expectation at every turn, to mixed effect. The film's narrative is all over the place, and it's bursting at the seams with eccentric characters, many of whom have little to do. Almereyda gets strong performances ...more