『Liberation of Emotion and the Encounter with Music』
🎥 Movie Overview
🎬 Title: Days of Happiness (Les Jours Heureux, 2023)
🌍 Country: 🇨🇦 Canada
🎞️ Genre: Drama / Music / Coming-of-Age
🗓️ Production and Release: Production Séville
⏳ Runtime: 94 minutes
📢 Director: Chloé Robichaud
🖋️ Screenplay: Chloé Robichaud
👩💼 Cast: Sophie Desmarais as Emma
Nour Belkhiria as Naël
🧩 Story Deep Dive (Spoilers)
🧠 Desire and the Comfort Zone
Emma lives completely trapped under her father and manager Patrick’s toxic control and emotional pressure. Her life and career had to be perfect — but that perfection was always defined by his standards.
For Emma, Naël becomes both a “place of escape” and a “space to breathe.”
- An Alternative Family Model: Naël, a recently separated single mother, lives with her young son, Zade. Emma is drawn to the warmth and ease of their everyday life — something she has never experienced. It fulfills her deep longing for a genuine and healthy sense of family intimacy.
- Emotional Authenticity: Naël offers Emma the first true outlet to express and be comforted for her emotions outside her father’s and the orchestra’s world of control. The anxiety and pain Emma suppresses on the conductor’s podium temporarily soften within her relationship with Naël.
🌟 Power Dynamics in the Workplace
Emma works as a conductor in the orchestra where Naël is a cellist. This setup inherently includes a hierarchical professional relationship, implying that Emma’s authority could affect their romance. Similar to the themes in the film Tár, the boundaries between professional and personal life blur — showing how power and intimacy can intertwine within creative spaces. Despite being Emma’s lover, Naël is inevitably influenced by Emma’s professional decisions and demeanor.
🧭 Naël’s Inner Conflict
Naël carries more emotional burden and inner turmoil regarding her identity and their relationship.
- Instability in Same-Sex Relationships: Naël openly confides in Emma about her fear and anxiety over how her family and others might perceive their relationship. Her unstable situation amplifies this hesitation, making it difficult for her to commit fully.
- Motherhood and Responsibility: Naël’s son, Zade, remains her top priority. She constantly worries about how her relationship with Emma could affect him — a tension that clashes with Emma’s intense emotional dependence.
🪞 Emma’s Projection of Control and Dependency
Emma unconsciously projects her father’s controlling tendencies and emotional instability onto her relationship with Naël. She becomes overly dependent on Naël, needing her as an “emotional anchor” to manage her inner turmoil. The more Emma struggles to break free from her father’s grip, the more emotionally burdened Naël becomes. Just as Emma seeks “perfect control” on the conductor’s podium, she also attempts to control the unpredictability within her relationship with Naël.
🌞 Symbolism of Balance and Liberation
Their relationship reaches a turning point when Emma finally severs the toxic bond with her father and experiences emotional liberation. Transforming the “violence” she once internalized into music, Emma learns to find herself again. Through this process, she begins to seek a relationship grounded in mutual respect and equilibrium rather than one-sided emotional dependence on Naël.
Through Naël, Emma learns to empathize with and accept the complexities of others’ lives and emotions — especially those of Naël as both a mother and a queer woman. This newfound emotional maturity deepens Emma’s artistry, allowing her to conduct with more genuine feeling and depth. Naël, in turn, becomes an indispensable part of Emma’s journey toward her own “Days of Happiness” — a fierce yet tender harmony that defines the film’s emotional resonance.
🪶 Emma’s Story of Growth
Days of Happiness is a delicate and emotional drama set against the captivating backdrop of classical music. It portrays a woman’s journey to reclaim her sense of self after escaping a toxic relationship. As Emma, who once pursued perfection at the cost of her own emotions, confronts relational turmoil and artistic challenges, she gradually moves toward her own genuine “days of happiness.” The film resonates deeply, offering both catharsis and inspiration to viewers.
🎯 Personal Rating (by preference)
💕 Love scene intensity: ♥♥♥
⭐ Rating: ★★★★
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