A Happy Event
A Happy Event
| 10 October 2011 (USA)
Watch Free for 30 Days

Stream thousands of hit movies and TV shows

Start 30-day Free Trial
A Happy Event Trailers

She drove me into a corner, then forced me to go beyond my limits. She made me confront the absolute: love, sacrifice, tenderness, abandonment. She dislocated me, transformed me. Why didn't anyone warn me? Why doesn't anyone ever talk about this?" Un heureux événement, or an intimate view of motherhood, sincere and with no taboos.

Reviews
Boobirt

Stylish but barely mediocre overall

Odelecol

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

View More
Chirphymium

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

View More
Patience Watson

One of those movie experiences that is so good it makes you realize you've been grading everything else on a curve.

View More
ciaopeche

The film's honesty can at times be hilarious, sensual, and painful. As you watch the lively young couple from act 1 morph into something unrecognizable, you can't help but feel despair. Only once the couple has reached rock-bottom can they begin to re-emerge, learning how to become themselves again. As Nico attempts to become the breadwinner, he slowly becomes cold and callous, unsympathetic to Barb and nothing like his former self. Barb becomes isolated, barely talking to her friends and even Nico, making Lea her life. Louise Bourgoin does a wonderful job of expressing the anguish her character feels, through blank stares and tears. I love the way this film explores postpartum depression in a real way, and how as the characters gradually have their love drained out of them, so does the color and light of the film, leaving only a blue-gray tone. Only when Barb begins to heal with the help of her mother, and Nico's gradual understanding of Barb's pain as he attempts to fulfill Barb's former role does warmth enter the screen again, signaling a new beginning for both her and Nico. A simple story in the sense it is a common occurrence in life, but extremely well executed.

View More
SnoopyStyle

Barbara Dray (Louise Bourgoin) is a grad student writing her PHD thesis on her way to being a professor assistant. She encounters video store clerk Nicolas Malle (Pio Marmaï) and they start flirting with movie titles. She gets pregnant. They have a girl naming her Lea, not Martha. Barb's irreverent mom dismisses the perfect mother idea. Barb struggles with raising Lea as it comes to a head.This has a reality and some funny moments. Bourgoin is a tall gorgeous model with some comedic chops. The story has a little bit of sadness and plenty of the struggles of child-raising. The movie opens with a very pregnant Barb unable to get comfortable. While it's a funny bit, it does indicate the moment when the movie should start to finish, and it's not. After she gives birth, the movie keeps going. It feels run-on. It might be better to foreshadow a moment later on in the movie. Overall, it has compelling everywoman story done with sincerity, comedy, and poetry.

View More
nikolova-assya

I guess today the questions about when and how to have kids and especially how to stay in a couple afterwards are becoming more and more difficult to answer. Actually in every movie I see on the topic, they try to persuade me that the only way to do it right is your way, but this usually doesn't'go without about a bit of socio-cultural propaganda about mothers, father and families. And this is the what I like about this movie - it doesn't lead you to preset conclusions, in fact it dos quite the opposite. Every time during the movie, when I thought I knew where this was going, it actually turned the other way around. But never the less when you look to the whole string of events, everything fits, everything is believable and actually can picture yourself or someone you know closely in such a situation. I actually quite remembered saying and thinking the same things as Barbara though the kid-having moment hasn't come to me yet. But apart being so honest and sincerely questioning our stands on the points of having kids, this movie has other great quality and this is the chemistry between the Bab and Nico. It's just that you feel their connection, you feel what is like to "love someone so much that the bet thing to do out of this love is to have a child". And this is great, because this is the answer of all the questions - love and slefgiving. You loose your way when you forget that. So in conclusion - you want to see this movie because it is gentle, it is sincere and will put you in the mood for love.

View More
bdugan-380-186048

Why has this movie not been made already? Its such a believable, everyday story, and it shows the way life really is. Two people meet, they have a sweet courting period, they're perfect together, they have a baby. And then its like two new people that have to start over with a new set of tough constraints & pressures. But they muddle along and work together, on the baby and on their own lives at the same time.I thought this was an extremely well conveyed telling of a story that we all know, but that can't be told too often. Every instance of it is unique, but with universal themes.I enjoyed the drama-less drama of this movie: life itself in its mundane details is so dramatic!

View More