‘Happiest Season': Blissfully Melancholic Queer Rom-Com is Easy to Digest [Capsule]

Clea DuVall’s “Happiest Season” can be viewed as a radical holiday movie, in that it uses, hell mimics, the innumerable heterosexual Christmas movie clichés that came before it, but forges them through the a queer perspective. Yes, it’s the token emblem of your average holiday romantic comedy, but it’s the unadorned authentic touch brought forth by DuVall (“The Intervention”) that turns “Happiest Season” into a slightly likable affair.

Taking place just a few days before Christmas, Abby (Kristen Stewart) is set to propose to girlfriend Harper (Mackenzie Davis), on Christmas morning no less, only to learn that her future in-laws haven’t a clue about their daughter’s preference for women, let alone that Abby even exists. And so begins this situational rom-com from DuVall as things go from bad to worse for Abby, who has to now pretend she’s somebody she’s not, all in the while trying to score points with Harper’s father, Ted (Victor Garber), who’s running for mayor in their small Pennsylvania town, Harper’s Mom, Tipper (Mary Steenburgen), a trophy wife, and Harper’s humorless and unhappily-married older sister, Sloane (an acerbically amusing Alison Brie). Add a few exes into the picture, including Riley (Aubrey Plaza), and former boyfriend Connor (Jake McDorman), and what you have is the ultimate Christmas vacation from hell for Abby.

At times, DuVall can’t quite find the right balance to juggle all these characters into a resolute and well-composed whole. It doesn’t help that there is a clear delving into predictable formula, tackling the very real difficulties of a specific kind of marginalized love into a story with broader appeal. If anything, it’s the performances that drive the engine forward here; Stewart makes Abby’s peculiar decision not to immediately split entirely believable by leaning into her “chill” persona, communicating silent heartbreak and confusion via her character’s jittery, awkward interactions with the strangers around her. However, stealing the show is the pitch-perfect comic timing of Dan Levy as Abby’s BFF, pet-sitting while she’s away, but slowly entering himself into the hijinks, concerned for his friend‘s well-being and realizing that he may be her only saving grace. It all amounts to a blissfully happy holiday movie and, in that particular fashion, does succeed in attaining a melancholic nature that is more than welcome in this pitifully depressing year. [B-]