We all need some measure of control in our lives. Without it, that way madness lies.
Poor Candice Phee (Daisy Axon) has almost none. Her mother, Claire (Emma Booth), has retreated into chronic depression since the crib death of Candice’s baby sister. Her father, Jim (Richard Roxburgh), can do nothing about this; he’s also angrily estranged from his incredibly wealthy brother — known by Candice as “Rich Uncle Brian” (Joel Jackson) — believing he got screwed during a collaborative business venture.
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| Candice (Daisy Axon) enthusiastically helps new best friend Douglas (Wesley Patten) search for the perfect tree, in which to test his dimension-hopping theories ... which involve jumping from a high branch. (The horse just, well, appears at unexpected moments.) |
As a result, despite being not quite 13, Candice has learned to fend for herself. She’s a bright, inquisitive and — as far as her classmates are concerned — insufferably cheerful adolescent, always first to raise her hand when teacher Miss Bamford (Miriam Margolyes) poses a question.
Noting the rows of carefully sorted gel pens forever arranged on Candice’s desk — among her other affectations — “mean girl” Jen (Alessandra Tognini) waspishly refers to her as “Essen,” short for “SN,” as in “special needs.” Indeed, it’s easy to assume that Candice is a spectrum child, or even autistic.
But no: The carefully arranged gel pens, her devotion to vocabulary — she reads the dictionary — are simply her means of maintaining somesemblance of order in her life.
Director John Sheedy’s H Is for Happiness — available via Amazon Prime and other streaming services — is scripted by Lisa Hoppe, and adapted from Barry Jonsberg’s award-winning 2013 young adult novel, My Life As an Alphabet (a far superior title, by the way). It’s a poignant, carefully nuanced and at times droll slice of Australian whimsy.
Although the emotional content is deeply felt and persuasively depicted — laughter and heartbreak existing side-by-side — Sheedy’s stylized approach owes more than a little to eclectic directors such as Wes Anderson, Baz Luhrmann and Bill Forsythe.
Particularly the latter: Like Forsythe, Sheedy’s tableaus frequently include random individuals doing interesting — or unusual — things in the background, or at the fringes of a random shot. Cinematographer Bonnie Elliott’s efforts are deliberately stylized, her depiction of this colorful coastal town of Albany somewhat heightened, in the manner of 2001’s Amelie.
A touch of magic realism also infiltrates this narrative, whether in the antics — and wisdom — of the cross-dressing costume shop proprietor (George Shevtsov); or Miss Bamford’s distractingly active lazy right eye; or in the mysterious miniature white horse that inhabits the nearby woods.
The woods themselves have plenty of personality; Elliott often aims her camera directly overhead, into the thick top-growth, as the trees mumble, grumble and groan in the breeze. It’s hard not to think of the Ents, in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.
Two things shift the frustrating dynamic in Candice’s life. The first is a classroom assignment, with Miss Bamford instructing each student to craft an autobiographical presentation, based on a randomly selected letter of the alphabet. Candice, although officially assigned the letter H, doesn’t restrict herself to such limitations; her subsequent saga cycles through quite a few other letters, as she attempts to “fix” her fractured family dynamic (and some other things, such as Miss Bamford’s self-conscious awareness of her distracting eye).
So yes: There’s also an element of Eleanor H. Porter’s Pollyanna at work here.
The second change is the arrival of Douglas Benson (Wesley Patten), a new boy in town, who winds up seated alongside Candice in class. Douglas is even more eccentric than Candice, believing that he has accidentally “dropped into” this dimension from elsewhere in the multiverse, and that his (single) mother (Deborah Mailman) isn’t his real mother, but merely an “alternate” mother.
Just as Candice constantly refers to her father’s brother as Rich Uncle Brian, Douglas immediately becomes “Douglas Benson from Another Dimension.”
Douglas spends much of his time working higher math and manipulating tesseracts, hoping to find the precise equation that’ll allow him to return to his own dimension: a plan that involves (rather recklessly) jumping from ever-higher trees in the aforementioned woods.
Needless to say, Douglas also is a troubled child. Needless to add, he and Candice soon become inseparable.
If all this sounds rather precious, well, yes; it is. But that’s a good thing, because Sheedy and Hoppe faithfully replicate the adolescent’s-eye-view of the world, which is depicted so well in Jonsberg’s book. Kids take straight-ahead approaches to problem solving, no matter how impractical — or unlikely to succeed — such a path might be.
Candice and Douglas are adorable together, each sympathetic to the other’s issues and behavior. She helps him fit in at school (sort of); he comes up with an utterly hilarious — and wildly inappropriate — gift for her impending 13th birthday. Axon is bubbly, wide-eyed and forever enthusiastic; Patten, sporting owl-like glasses, is solemn, sincere and as erudite with math, as she is with vocabulary.
Both young actors are totally endearing.
Jackson is delightful, as the best uncle one could imagine. In many important ways, Brian treats Candice like an adult, discussing her every comment, suggestion and scheme with exaggerated seriousness. Their relationship is solid … even if he has a tendency to go overboard with gifts, which merely intensifies his brother’s jealous anger (which Candice recognizes).
Margolyes is a total hoot, granting Miss Bamford the sort of Shakespearean flourish that ordinarily would enchant a classroom full of kids … but nothing can overcome that disturbing lazy eye.
Booth’s Claire is a study in withdrawn misery; a veritable shadow of a human being, often depicted in beiges and grays, as if existing just this side of ghosthood. Roxburgh, in turn, exudes helpless, frustrated impotence: a man who long ago gave up on any notion of helping his wife. That said, he erupts in palpable — almost frightening — anger, whenever the subject of his brother comes up (or, worse yet, when he puts in an appearance).
Production designer Nicki Gardiner is kept quite busy, starting with the candy-colored storybook appearance of Albany’s downtown shops. This is one of Candice’s three worlds: the “outside world” of eccentric shopkeepers and dramatic surrounding landscapes. Her “school world” is slightly exaggerated, strange and fun. And her “home world” is a house of silence, stillness and grief.
Rich Uncle Brian’s home is jaw-droppingly massive, and lavishly appointed. Other settings — Candice’s bedroom, her father’s cluttered home office — have a timeless atmosphere, as if clocks stopped in the late 1950s or early ’60s.
But that’s deceptive, and part of Sheedy’s dreamy approach; we see no smart phones, but laptop computers are in evidence. Candice often dresses like a bobby soxer, but the town’s outlying hills are dotted with a modern windmill farm.
Everything is assembled with precision and care: an impressive feature debut by Sheedy, also quite adept at coaxing persuasive — if occasionally embroidered — performances from his cast. The result is a marvelous little film that reaffirms the notion that magic isn’t absent in our world; it merely needs to be rediscovered — and properly manipulated — by those willing to believe in the healing power of unfettered joy.
(But, I must confess, I still don’t quite get the horse.)
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