I Was Happy Here

Peter McGinn

To me it felt like the movie I Was Happy Here is an art film, long before Indie movies became a thing. Also known as Time Lost and TIme Remembered, an artsy-fartsy title if I ever saw one, it is mostly about mood, memory and scenery. The dialogue is blunt and realistic at times, but dreamy and wistful at other moments, and it seems nearly every character gets to say something poetic and deep before the movie is done, our melancholic lead character more than anyone. Considering how often she waxed poetically about loving the place she came from, I was never quite sure why she left to go to London at all. She seems to have expected her boyfriend to follow her, but perhaps neglected to let him know that. There she was forced by her own inertia to marry a man she apparently never loved. I would have liked her a lot more if she was less of a victim until the final fifteen minutes of the movie. Perhaps that was the character growth you like to see in characters, though usually it happens more gradually. Come to that her husband, who was a bit of a jerk throughout, showed growth in character himself at the end. So it isn’t a movie I will watch again, but it was fine. If you like nostalgic atmosphere and coastal scenery, this film is dripping with both.