First Take at LYIFF: The Way to Happiness - a delicatessen themed around film, taking its owner on a very personal journey

SYNOPSIS: Saül Birnbaum is a “hidden child”, separated from his parents at the age of 6 to escape the upcoming Shoah, sent by a Kindertransport abroad, from Vienna to Brussels. In 1986, Saül is on the road to resilience, he tries to reinvent his life, to re-enchant it. On the stage of the Délicatessen he owns, the 7th Art triumphs every day. With his protégé Joakin, a young Chilean director who fled Pinochet, they decide to write the story of Saül’s childhood and make a film of it. But love comes knocking on his door and confronts him with his past.

It is a common understanding that cinema has the power to change lives. This film, screened as the second feature of this year’s Lytham International Film Festival, came in from Luxembourg from director Nicolas Steil - and while it is a heartfelt piece of filmmaking that has good intentions, based on the general audience response, and reading some of the Letterboxd comments, it feels like some elements may have been lost in translation.

English Language Subtitles available on this trailer - click the CC button to turn them on.

Steil uses a lot of the knowledge he gained making his first feature Réfractaire (The Undercover War as it is known in English territories, another World War 2 inspired piece) in 2009 and the many years of experience he’s had in the film and TV production industry to turn in a relatively well paced 1 hour 52 minute feature, that gets a lot right, but in terms of the execution of a pretty heavy plot, does feel a bit of a mish-mash of ideas. Henri Rouanne-Rosenblatt adapts his own book very faithfully to the best of my knowledge, working with Michel Fessler, but the multiple stories ongoing at the same time probably didn’t land as well with a British audience as well as it would’ve done elsewhere - there’s the story of back in the war, then back to 1986, then back to the war, again, showing the TV influence of the director more than anything. It’s shot well by Pierre Milon, and the original music from Kyan Bayani just about does the job for a film like this.

As for the cast, Simon Abkarian and Django Schrevens are two very likable leads, Pascale Arbillot plays the love interest (central to Abkarian’s character Saul going on this journey to discover his past really well), Andre Jung provides comic relief following some of the heavier moments that the film deals with, and rounding out the cast is Eric Caravaca, Helena Noguerra, and Mathilda May. All things considered, the message of the film certainly landed even with it being a subtitled screening, but the general style of the film and how it does the story of ‘finding the past while making a whole fictional movie about it’ did take a bit of getting used to.

THE VERDICT

The Way to Happiness is a well made, poignant, and very raw tribute to not only what film can do for escapsim, but also what it can do to rediscover the past - I can see why the LYIFF panel selected it, especially as it followed a workshop (for which a lot of what was said in terms of personal films being the hardest to make), but crucially - it has some serious potential on the festival circuit.

RATING: 3.5/5