听 Jan (Jankowski) wants to be a writer. But since he's 30-years-old and hasn't had anything published, his mother thinks it's time he got a proper job, got on with his life and, most of all, finally moved out of her tiny flat.
When Jan learns that she may be terminally ill, he decides to mend his ways and "give her everything now she lacked before".
Courting local factory worker and single mum Marta (Hajewska), Jan tries his best to make his mother believe that he's finally grown up.
He even stops lazing around at home for long enough to earn some extra cash with an estate agent. Yet, despite all his attempts to change, nothing goes according to plan, leaving both his mother and Marta wondering what they've done to deserve this hopeless slacker.
Set in a grim post-Communist Poland that's dominated by industrial estates and factories, "Happy Man" is anything but cheerful.
Each scene is so drab and grey, you wonder if director Szumowska had an army of Skodas pumping out exhaust fumes behind the cameras. And the film's snapshot of the city - it was filmed on location in Krakow - suggests a world that's full of the elderly, the infirm, bandaged children, and decaying tenement buildings.
It's probably the most depressing film you'll see all year, but there's no denying Szumowska's deft yet sombre touch. Framing the ineffectual Jan through doorways, window-panes, hospital corridors, and huge empty lecture halls, Szumowska never lets us forget how utterly useless her hero is.
Turning "Happy Man" into a cutting critique of male selfishness, Szumowska leaves us in no doubt that women are probably better off without men... at least if Jan is any indication of what the male species has to offer.
In Polish with English subtitles.
