FILM REVIEW: A Happy Divorce (2021)

RATING ® 3.5/10

Set in a broken home that is seemingly not so broken at first glance. A Happy Divorce is a Zambian film from Producer Kabwe Mulenga and Director/Writer Lee Kabongo that held it’s initial release on YouTube on the 17th of April 2021. It journeys us through the life of an unhappy married couple. In this article we’ll highlight the pros of the film and every other reason you probably might not like it, subject only to our own opinion.

We’ll start with the pros…

It’s a good story overall. It abides by most components of good storytelling and has a quite compelling plot. It was well thought out and has all the dynamics of a typical african marriage reinacted.

The camera movements were perky, and the smooth fusion of the shots when our couple holding a picture frame transitions to a past memory, was in our view, a genius technique that was crafted to perfection.

The casting choices on the roles of the two children was equally remarkable. They brought a sense of life to the film we hadn’t seen untill that point.

The pros end here as these are the only positive things we saw in the film. Declaimer: put on your seat belts as the rest of this article is a bumpy ride, nonetheless a very real one. And a very helpful one if you’ll take it as constructive criticism and nothing else.

A mountain of cons…

As mentioned before, the story was good, but the screenplay failed to match it. Exposition is the number one sin of screenwriting. Don’t tell us the story, SHOW US! This script felt more to us like it was written for theatre and not screen. It could’ve done much better.

We failed to understand some of the casting choices. Minus the two children, who did exceptionally well, the other two adults used in the film didn’t bring their roles to life. Their lines of dialogue were lagging, they kept swallowing words, they kept shying away from each other, they couldn’t hold a gaze, they definitely need to learn to use their eyes better. They also might have lacked direction, yes, and we’ll get to that in a bit, but they didn’t put in a hundred and it showed. Most people would blame this on the Director but it isn’t the Director’s job to teach acting whilst on set. The actors themselves should’ve come to set prepared and well rehearsed for their roles. ACTORS TAKE NOTE!

The sound left much to be desired. The foley and the score entirely failed the film too. We had to turn down the volume on my headsets by nearly half because the audio track was heavily unbalanced. As makers of film, we believe that sound is arguably the most important aspect of production after lighting, unfortunately this was never the case for the makers of this film.

Let’s now discuss the lighting. I understood the need for a darker tone because this is a dark story. But some of the shots were too underexposed in most of the film. The shots in especially the bedroom were underexposed to the point where we could see grain in the mid-tones. The lens was flaring at some point, this could have been controlled. The TV in the bedroom had a blue glow which could be noticed on both the actor’s faces. If used properly, this would’ve looked pleasing but unfortunately it didn’t, the glow was too overexposed. Closed spaces are often the best places to manipulate lighting scenarios, the gaffer should’ve taken advantage of this.

There’s a break in the film after the woman tells her husband that she wants a divorce. We then cut to the establishing shot and then to a clock in the livingroom that tells us that the time has changed. But then we cut back to the bedroom where they basically pick up the conversation exactly where they left it. Who allowed this? This film lacked the much needed direction that contributed to nearly half of it’s shortcomings.

If we could change one thing, it would be the opening. Alot of time was wasted showing production credits for unestablished media houses. It’s not really a bad thing, but maybe hold them off until the end because most people came to watch the film, so show them the film first. The film runs for a little over 11 minutes which is pretty standard for a short film, but it could’ve been trimed to maybe 8 minutes or less. Yes, pacing in post also matters.

In conclusion, we were maybe hoping to see a skeleton crew in the end credits. This might have meant that they slacked in most areas because crew got overwhelmed with alot more work but sadly not. They had a crew so big it slightly even surpassed an industry standard skeleton crew. So we’re not going to take excuses from anyone.

Overall the film has a rating of 3.5/10 from us and “E” for effort. You can watch A Happy Divorce on YouTube at the link below.

Watch A Happy Divorce (2021) on YouTube here https://youtu.be/9mOxsNGqhT4