“Happy is the family with a peaceful mother,” a voice drones from the TV in a cramped, Tbilisi apartment in the opening minutes of Nana Ekvtimishvili and Simon Groß’s domestic drama My Happy Family. “Where she sacrifices herself for her family, raises children …” the voice continues, seemingly emanating from some kind of televised ceremony. Though barely audible, it speaks volumes about the strict social codes that operate within Georgian society and the particular pressures placed on women. So when Manana, a fiftysomething teacher, mother to two teenage children and wife to husband Soso, decides to leave the family home and move into an apartment of her own, she is met with disbelief by nearly everyone around her.
As an army of worried family members implore her to think about her actions (in other words, change her mind), the film’s central dilemma takes shape: will she follow through on her quest for independence or cave to relentless social pressure? The omens don’t look good: the gas supply to her new apartment has been cut off; she is told the previous tenant tried to poison herself. But gradually, Manana begins to settle into her new life. Whereas grocery shopping was previously a chore, she now delights in growing tomatoes on her balcony while the noise of domestic wrangles has been replaced by peaceful Mozart sonatas. Meanwhile, attempts to bring her back to the fold do not tire, led by her overbearing brother, Rezo. “I don’t want it … I don’t want everyone talking about my sister,” he laments, revealing that keeping the family together is not just a private, but an intensely public matter. After all, what on earth will the neighbours say?
Surrounded by a cast of emotional – often inebriated – men, Manana (played by Ia Shugliashvili) is phlegmatic and undeterred. Over a series of slow-paced, captivating scenes the camera follows her with almost magnetic fidelity, often peering over her shoulder or gazing into her furrowed, expressive face. We regularly witness Manana stepping through entrances and doors, moving in and out of spaces, as she looks for pockets of solitude and safety in the maze of male control. And while the marine-blue wallpaper of her new apartment offers a sense of sanctuary, an unwanted intrusion from her brother once again reminds her that even in a different Tbilisi district she remains under patriarchal protection.
This interrogation and manipulation of space makes My Happy Family an enthralling and, at times, queasy drama. Nowhere is this more palpably felt than around the dinner table, which, in Georgia, holds unparalleled significance as a symbol of family unity. On important anniversaries, family members, friends and friends of friends congregate for a supra (feast) and sing stirring folk songs until the plates are empty and jugs of wine dry. Manana, worn down by years of playing happy families, finds these interminable occasions overwhelming, brilliantly captured by Ekvtimisihvili’s shots which blur with bodies too numerous for the frame. It creates a dizzying claustrophobia to the film that brings the viewer into sympathetic alliance with Manana.
My Happy Family is a film embedded in Georgia’s unique social fabric but its concerns touch upon something more universal. Manana’s plight calls into question what happens when the system of socially assigned identities glitches and falls apart, when the distance between expectation and reality becomes too great. Take poor old Soso, for whom Manana’s departure has been quite existential. In a limp attempt to win his wife back, he offers to put up some shelves in her new apartment, in what is one of the film’s most well-composed scenes. His gesture is so comically cliched, it is in fact, deeply moving. For here is a man, whose only means of communication lies in playing the generic fix-it-father, in sticking to the socially approved script. It is a tense, tight-lipped exchange, characteristic of the film’s frugal use of dialogue, but one which shows that expressions of enmity almost always conceal unexpressed pain.
My Happy Family was released in 2017. A couple of years later a Georgian/Swedish collaboration, And Then We Danced, which similarly centres on a figure struggling to be seen for who they are as opposed to whom they are required to be, arrived on UK cinema screens. I recommend watching it as a follow-up to My Happy Family, both of which capture much about contemporary Georgia. But start here, for the hubbub of a Georgian supra, the taste of homemade wine, for the oppressive odour of reality.
My Happy Family is available on Netflix in the US and UK
