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Days of Happiness

Country: Canada, Language: French, 118 mins

Original Title

Les Jours heureux
  • Director: Chloé Robichaud
  • Writer: Chloé Robichaud
  • Producer: Paul-E. Audet, Roseline Egoume, Pierre Even, Jeannette Garcia, Yanick Savard

CGiii Comment

A young orchestra conductor faces a crossroads in her life and career in this ambitious drama that reunites writer-director Chloé Robichaud with actor Sophie Desmarais.

Days of Happiness, the latest drama from Montreal-based writer-director Chloé Robichaud, is an emotionally complex, visually assured drama about a young orchestra conductor who finds herself at a crossroads in her life and career.

Charismatic, gifted Emma (Sophie Desmarais, who starred in Robichaud’s breakout, Sarah Prefers to Run, TIFF ’13) is on track to become a major player on the Quebec classical music scene. Audiences are enraptured by her work, but her career is very closely managed by her controlling father, Patrick (Sylvain Marcel), who’s also her agent. After years of acquiescing to his demands, Emma is finally in a position to re-evaluate both their professional and personal relationships — and that’s when cellist and single mother Naëlle (Nour Belkhiria) enters her life, offering her the chance to experience an entirely different type of family dynamic.

Comparisons to Todd Field’s Tár are likely inevitable, but this is a very different project. For a start, Robichaud is much more sympathetic to her characters, and far more invested in their mental and emotional well-being. Cinematographer Ariel Méthot and artistic consultant Yannick Nézet-Séguin (music director and principal conductor of Montreal’s Orchestre Métropolitain) give the film a visual and aural texture all its own. And Desmarais is uniquely compelling in the role of Emma, who’s only just beginning to realize she can have the life she deserves, if she fights for it.

NORM WILNER


Trailer...

Cast & Characters

Sophie Desmarais (as Emma)
Vincent Leclerc (as Philippe Sivigny)
Yves Jacques (as Yves)
Christian Paul (as Membre de la direction)
Sylvain Marcel (as Patrick)
Geneviève Alarie (as Membre du CA)
Nour Belkhiria (as Naëlle)
Catherine Gagnon (as Doublure Naëlle)
Katherine Levac (as Debbie)
Maude Guérin (as Sabrina)
Joseph Antaki (as Curé)
Marie-Claude Hénault (as Femme au quai)
Liliane Blanco-Binette (as Bussgirl)
Alain Dahan (as Membre de la direction)
Ines Defosse (as Alex)
Jean-Philippe Baril-Guérard (as Thomas)
Cassandra Latreille (as Jeune entraineur)
Luis Bertrand (as Gustave Sinclair)
Roberto Mei (as Préposé CHSLD)
Marco Ledezma (as Homme)
Émilie Josset (as Crystelle)
Marie-Madeleine Sarr (as Sylvia)
Tarek Bendahmane (as Damien)
Alix Souffront (as Membre CA #2)
Ariel Charest (as Valérie)