The Happy - "Astrid"

On February 4th The Happy made its online debut at Film Daily. This hilarious short film follows the misadventures of Par, a bewildered Indian-American from Texas and New Jersey who is mistaken for something of a swami as he searches Los Angeles for his own fulfillment. Parekh wrote, directed, produced, and stars in the eight-minute comedy, which also serves as the pilot for a web series based on the lovelorn and spiritually-lost Par.

After bumbling through an awkward conversation with his ex, our protagonist stumbles into a wayward flyer that, like falling leaflets from a rescue helicopter, offers him salvation…in the form of a free hug (this is LA, not Saigon). What unfolds next is reminiscent of Terry Gilliam’s 1985 film Brazil (in which a government worker swats a fly which falls into his typewriter resulting in a typo that leads to the arrest of the wrong man). In The Happy, due to a house number’s missing screw, Par lands not at the house of free hugs, but rather at the apartment of a self-obsessed, new-age actress Astrid desperately seeking her own transcendental happiness.

Astrid, who has been expecting her Past Life Regression Therapist, opens the door to find the Indian-American Par before her (not as he is, in his jeans and t-shirt, but as an ashram guru bathed in a golden aura). She instantly mistakes him for her new therapist, and he becomes her unsuspecting savior. As our silent, meat-loving hero anticipates his hug, his quest for fulfillment is hijacked by the chakra-focused, militantly-vegetarian stranger. Using cleverly-chosen music and sound effects straight out of a spaghetti western, Parekh brings anticipation, suspense, and surprise to a zany, one-sided conversation. 

The Happy parodies LA’s fascination with rediscovery and spiritual enlightenment as a disharmonious mixture of self-reflection and self-aggrandizement, a place “where everybody talks and nobody listens.” In the film’s LA, absurd human tendencies to over-mystify just about everything and mankind’s tendencies to typecast just about everyone are depicted with humor.

The Happy, An Absurdist Short Film By Filmmaker Par Parekh 

@welcometothehappy

www.thehappy.tv