Another Happy Day
Written and Directed by Nora Differ
Starring Lauren Lapkus, Marilyn Dodds Frank, Jean Elie, Carrie Coon
Unrated
Runtime: 91 minutes
Available to rent or buy on digital platforms October 1

by Christine Freije, Staff Writer

New parents, especially mothers, are told that they will love their baby automatically, unconditionally, and immediately. But no one ever talks about whether their baby will love them back.

Another Happy Day, the emotionally rich debut feature film by Nora Fiffer, is billed as a comedy about postpartum depression, but it could also be described as a story about unrequited love between a mother and a newborn child. It’s a funny, bittersweet, sharply realized story about scrambling after love that doesn’t come naturally. 

We meet Joanna (Lauren Lapkus) six weeks after the birth of her daughter, Alma. She is dealing with the physical effects of new motherhood: sleep-deprived, woken by nightmares and crying, breasts sore from feeding and pumping, eyes glazed and manic at once, and forgotten poop stains on her clothing. Though her husband, Lucien (Jean Elie) is supportive, he works full time and offers Joanna lots of unsolicited parenting advice when he’s home. Missing her immediate family, Joanna goes looking for a support system, and reconnects with an estranged aunt, Miriam (Marilyn Dodds Frank), an eccentric actor.

Fiffer and Lapkus skillfully depict the unease and disorientation of early motherhood. An early scene of Joanna sneaking into bed after putting Alma in her bassinet is shot and performed with all the tension of a horror film. Joanna regularly drifts off to sleep and dreams of horrible things happening to her own body or Alma’s, and Fiffer crafts these surreal sequences with just the right balance of realism and absurdity. Lapkus plays some of the film’s most disturbing moments–sterilizing a needle with a lighter while holding a baby, carrying on a casual conversation with a stranger as her nipple starts to bleed–with a kind of zombie deadpan, her face blank and open, just about to crumble. 

The film is also unafraid to show us moments of Joanna’s accidental cruelty, selfishness, and naivete. She is frustrated by her inability to make art since Alma’s birth, and outraged when her friend Alex (Adam Poss) expresses surprise that she doesn’t have any new pieces. She rolls her eyes at the cooing of the women at a friend’s baby shower. In a scene that feels a bit like an acting exercise, she calls her husband boring, weak, and a quitter. She drinks a little, smokes a little, leaves her baby crying in the other room as she tends to something else; she is the face of unheroic, imperfect, messy motherhood.

The most complex relationship in the film is between Joanna and Miriam (Marilyn Dodds Frank ). When Joanna first visits her aunt’s apartment, Alma in tow, Miriam tells her that she’s not interested in hearing about her baby. She derides Joanna’s habit of timing Alma’s naps on her cellphone. She doesn’t mind having her around to make coffee and help her prepare for auditions, but she is also happy to kick her out when she wants to be alone. Miriam is the only person in her life who doesn’t care that Joanna is a mother, so Miriam’s apartment becomes a refuge where she can play at being a different version of herself. 

Marilyn Dodds Frank gives the stand-out performance of the film as Miriam, who is at once deeply compelling and nearly unbearable. She’s moody and cruel, but cool and brazen. The movie avoids the trap of depicting her as a lonely, childless elder; instead, she seems almost completely satisfied to keep her own company. Joanna, on the other hand, tries to compel Miriam to become something she has no interest in being–a mother figure, a caretaker, someone to relieve the burden of parental responsibility. When the conflict between the two women comes to a head, Joanna tells Miriam, “I came here looking for family, I don’t need a friend.” But Another Happy Day proves over and over that familial love is not as simple as it seems: aunts can be cruel, husbands can be controlling, and mothers can be absent.

Another Happy Day, lovingly crafted and bursting with talent from the Chicago theater scene (most notably, Carrie Coon in a withering one-scene performance), is a small film full of ideas and images that have stayed with me in the weeks since I first saw it. It is a raw, funny, and delicate portrait of the work, time, grief, selfishness, sacrifice, and struggle that make up motherly love.