Movie Review: Sexual Encounters and Meta Moments

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By David DeWitt

Hugo Catalán, left, and Emilio von Sternenfels in Julián Hernández’s film. Credit Breaking Glass Pictures

HOLLYWOOD---It’s such a poetic title, “I Am Happiness on Earth,” but it’s also a purposeful con. On earth, in the Mexican director Julián Hernández’s artful vision, there’s not much happiness, at least not in the dour, sexually explicit couplings and triplings among the men and women in this film. If you hang on, the slow-paced “I Am Happiness” may teach you how to appreciate its scoreless, flat, dreamlike flow. I wasn’t convinced; at one point my notes included the gut reaction “This is awful.” But the film does land somewhere — clichéd, but still — and I grew to respect its aims. [link]