Jayne (Parker Posey) is a very rich young woman who is married to Jackson (Christian Camargo), the son of a famous painter who is obsessed with the enormity of his father's legacy. They live in San Francisco and have been trying to get pregnant for some time. When her older sister, Laura (Demi Moore), calls her from the family home in Pittsburgh, Jayne falls into a panic about being asked to help deal with her father Joe's (Rip Torn) growing dementia. She goes into a fashionable shop and purchases a $2800 pair of boots. Examining them closely, she discovers they are blue rather than black and, in one of her many fantasy trips, she imagines the salesman as a buzzard.
Laura, who lives in San Francisco with her children and her bisexual husband, a massage therapist, is worried about her father's senility. She wants a break from her onerous caregiving responsibilities, like cleaning Joe up when he soils himself. Jayne insists that he is okay, but then she has always seen reality through rose-colored glasses. When they were young, Laura took her away from the house whenever Joe was having sex with other women. Jayne never knew about this betrayal of her beloved mother whose opal pendant she cherishes.
The two sisters not only have a hard time dealing with their dramatic differences, they are challenged by how to respond to Shelly (Ellen Barkin) who lives with Joe and claims to be a nurse. She is really a crack addict who has found a lucky sanctuary in a cruel world. When Laura and Jayne learn that their father only has a short time to live, they have to decide whether to put him in a nursing home or move him to San Francisco and live with Jayne. The other thing the sisters must do is search for the buried treasure Joe claims is under his backyard.
Mitchell Lichtenstein has written and directed this family drama and filled it with idiosyncratic characters. Sometimes the magic works, and we connect on an emotional level with them; other times, the magic doesn't work and we see them as crazy people. Besides the surreal imaginings of Jayne, there is a lot of pot-smoking, a strange man who shows up at a yard sale, and a handsome young lad who takes a fancy to Jayne. The wonderful title of this film, Happy Tears, aptly conveys the oddball nature of this family.
Special features on the DVD include an audio commentary with writer/director Mitchell Lichtenstein; and the theatrical trailer.
