Days of Happiness (Chloé Robichaud, 2023) (Patreon)

Of course it's a bit awkward, like showing up to the gala wearing the same dress. Robichaud's third feature follows just a year after Todd Field's TÁR, essentially making it "the other lesbian symphony conductor movie." And while there's quite a bit of interest in Days of Happiness all on its own, the comparison actually helps reveal some of what the writer-director is up to. Where Lydia Tár was a globetrotting high-culture star on the verge of a downfall, Emma (Sophie Desmarais) has just completed an internship with Montreal's Orchestre Métropolitaine and is jockeying for a permanent appointment. Everyone sees Emma's talent, but as a woman in the music world, she is subject to conflicting demands that her male counterparts are not. "Be bolder," she's told, "take up more space," but then again "it wouldn't hurt you to smile now and then."

Days of Happiness is organized in three "movements," each corresponding to a piece of music Emma is conducting for the OM. The first, Mozart, is a hit, because Mozart always is. The second, Schoenberg, is damned with faint praise as a "bold choice," "a bit out there." (Incidentally, the piece Emma chose was Pelleas und Melisande, an early Schoenberg composition with a tonal center, one of the most conventional things the man ever wrote.) And it's in the third work, a movement of Mahler's Third Symphony, that Emma attempts to leave blood and sweat on the podium, demonstrating that she "feels" the music.

It's also interesting to compare Days to TÁR on a psychological level. Emma is wracked with doubt, partly because she was raised by an abusive dad (Sylvain Marcel) who demanded that she become the great artist he was unable to be. On the intimacy front, Emma is in a relationship with Naëlle (Nour Belkhiria), a Moroccan-Canadian single mother and a cellist with the OM. Naëlle insists on concealing her relationship with Emma from her family ("it's complicated for us"), and at times appears to be on the cusp of reconciliation with her son's father. When Emma asks for the slightest clarification of their relationship, Naëlle manipulatively turns it around. "Don't smother me," "no ultimatums," "if you're not happy, leave," etc.

A number of Letterboxd reviews for Days of Happiness, seemingly written by queer women, joke that Emma is like Lydia Tár as a "bottom." Now, I will confess, I've never been in a lesbian relationship. But I do sense that Robichaud (herself a queer filmmaker) means to present Emma as someone who struggles to unlearn that she deserves less. Whether or not she and Naëlle remain together in the end is unclear, but what is readily apparent is Emma's bond with Naëlle's son Jad (Rayan Benmoussa). He likes her, and sees her as a capable, caring adult in his corner. Jad sees Emma for herself, apart from her daddy issues and her sexual dependency, and this burgeoning parental role allows Emma to recompose her own life as a compromise between control and risk.