Lucien’s Happiness
2019 · 23m · Canada
Directed by Nathalie Hébert
Genres: documentary, essay film
Tones: contemplative, tender
Musician Lucien Comeau of Tracadie-Sheila, New Brunswick, discusses happiness, success and the meaning of everyday life with the filmmaker.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A straightforward sit-down chat about happiness with a small-town musician—it's exactly the kind of earnest, unadorned documentary that usually puts me to sleep, and I'm genuinely baffled why this one doesn't.
Hébert's essay film sits comfortably in the lineage of intimate portrait documentaries and philosophical nonfiction, where the filmmaker's restraint and attentiveness to Lucien's voice becomes its own formal argument about presence and listening.
The film's entire architecture hinges on Hébert's decision to stay close and quiet—letting silence breathe between Lucien's thoughts rather than papering it over—and that single choice transforms a spare setup into something genuinely generous.