Jane Adams

In Happiness (1998), Joy Jordan could easily become someone we are simply invited to laugh at. Jane Adams gives her enough weight to make that uncomfortable. Todd Solondz writes people who say things to make themselves feel better, and Adams lets us hear the loneliness underneath. We were moved by Joy because her desire for affection remains serious even when the writing makes her ridiculous. It is a fine performance, and a large part of why we recommend this difficult comedy.

We can see the same care in Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Allen, whose loneliness is not treated as an amusing defect. Adams belongs alongside him in our account of why the film works: she gives us a reason to care about someone the script can be hard on. That does not excuse the slow pace or the repeated humiliations, which make its 140 minutes feel overgenerous. We would not ask her to make Joy less needy, but we would ask Solondz to move on sooner.

The screen breakthrough was Happiness, and the subsequent career has moved between independent films and recurring television work. Supporting roles include Carrie in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) and Sheila in Todd Field’s Little Children (2006), while Frasier and Hung provided recurring television parts. She has frequently been cast as sensitive or struggling women, which makes sense after Joy. But we would resist treating her simply as a reliable source of distress: the comedy in Happiness depends on our caring about the person being made to look foolish.

In All the Light in the Sky (2012), she plays Marie and shares the writing with director Joe Swanberg. That writing partnership is worth noting alongside the acting: she is helping decide what the central woman gets to say, rather than only finding a way to say it. Start with Happiness, provided a long, uncomfortable comedy is what the evening calls for.