Happiness is a Sad Song

Between the city, the suburbs and the theft of an automobile.

Ruth is the story of a painful adolescence. Ruth decides on a whim to leave her small village in the Bas Saint-Laurent for the "real world" of the big city, Montreal. There she meets up with her brother, Jean-Paul. Her many lovers range from one-night stands like Bernard to Yves and Robert, who are briefly in her life. Passionate, anticonformist Ruth has to contend with her brother's ferocious jealousy - he goes as far as attacking Robert, his best friend. Robert, completely baffled by Ruth's cynical recklessness, finally pushes her away. Ruth continues her struggle to find absolute love. She clings passionately, clumsily and shamelessly to those she loves and those she doesn't, in frenzied desperation. Continually disappointed and shut out by the "real world," she chooses a way out that is typically extreme...

A first snowfall in Montreal (Canada). Jean's sax playing mirrors his life, including the false notes.

Monique and Lussier, two good friends from the street, let themselves go to the rhythm of their little, somewhat gray world. Like a dream that grows in the “slush”, they manage to sail above our heads.

Forty-something Pierre is serving a fourteen year prison sentence. His mother, who is approaching eighty, visits him every week. Suzanne, Pierre's current wife, has moved on since he was sent away. Each character gives us a frank account of a period in their lives that seems suspended in time by the fragile connection between life on the inside and the world outside. Their destinies are linked by crime, guilt and loneliness, and like casualties of love and desire, they are dying to stick their heads above the water and breathe the air of life.

A separated couple meet again after 10 years when the body of their missing son is found. Amid the guilt of losing a loved one, they hesitantly move toward affirmation of life, acceptance of death, and even the possibility of reconciliation.

Long-time friends Yan, Simon, Roxanne, Maxime and his sister Lily are in their early 20s, the age when anything is possible. They are just embarking on their careers. Then one fine summer day, Yan is involved in a fatal car accident. The young man is killed instantly and the rest of the gang is thrown into turmoil.

Jimmy is trapped in a spiral of street drug addiction and withdrawal. One day, Jimmy is forced to get back in contact with his family. The pariah’s return to the pack reawakens old demons in his elder brother Nathan.

Michèle shares her life with Paul, her husband and work colleague. She has a lover, Thomas, a musician with whom she has been having a passionate affair for some time. Attracted by Thomass non-conformity and lust for life, Michèle abandons her husband, her son and her profession to live this frenzy through to its conclusion. A quest for freedom and change that sends Michèle on a turbulent drift, but remains, nevertheless, intimate and personal.

The story of Catherine, who, after her violent husband puts her life in serious danger one night, decides to run away with her son and start a new life under a fresh identity.

Rabah is forced to take over custody of his son Cédrick. The boy has been mute since losing his mother. Despite the financial strain caused by his immigrant status and undeterred by his fraught relationship with his son, Rabah will manage to rebuild Cédrick’s trust so they can be a family again.

François Delisle draws an intimate portrait of his mother in a nursing home. A chronicle of the daily life and medical care of a woman approaching the end, treated with love, respect and dignity.

Across various timelines and locations, the fates of four characters intertwine as they struggle to find connections and meaning in a world transformed by climate change.