Ok, it's back to being referred to as untitled by its production company, but I'll just use Life During Wartime for now as a working title until a new one is announced. Here's the plot description from the official press release - it's pretty illuminating, but in following with what we've heard so far:
"The characters in this part-sequel/part-variation on HAPPINESS struggle to find a place for themselves in an unpredictable and volatile world. The past haunts the present and imperils the future: ghosts circle and loom, trouble and console. The question of forgiveness, and its limits, threads throughout a series of intersecting love stories, offering clarity and, possibly, alternatives to the comforts of forgetting. There is Joy (Shirley Henderson), who discovers her husband Allen (Michael Kenneth Williams) is not quite cured of his peculiar “affliction” and runs away, seeking solace and guidance from her mother and sisters; her former suitor, Andy (Paul Reubens), now deceased, but still never giving up in his effort to win Joy’s heart; her sister Trish (Allison Janney), who meets Harvey (Michael Lerner), a lonely divorced man on the cusp of retirement, and hopes that a new man in the house will bring stability to her fragile family; her sister Helen who feels victimized by both her family and her Hollywood success; her mother Mona (Renée Taylor), who can’t let go of her bitterness about men; Harvey’s son Mark (Rich Pecci), who struggles with social isolation and profound pessimism; Bill (Ciáran Hinds), Trish’s former husband, just released from prison and on a quest to reconnect with his son Billy (Chris Marquette); Jacqueline (Charlotte Rampling), the needy woman who forgoes caution in her desperate search for love; and Kristina (Chane’t Johnson), a fugitive from prison who can’t let go of her obsessive—albeit chaste—love for Allen. These and other characters and storylines as well—alternately funny and sad, outrageous and poignant—dovetail, expand, and collide to create a kaleidoscopic and emotionally resonant portrait of prisoners of love and life during wartime."
...They do keep using that phrase; maybe it will wind up being the title after all. ;) Anyway, Solondz is also quoted as saying, "ten years have passed since Happiness, but I prefer not to be beholden to the literalness of time or circumstance. I like to tweak things, get at stuff from a fresh angle, and so, for example, some characters have aged five years, some twenty years, some histories have been altered, and I have allowed race not to be something set in stone. Of course, it’s a completely different cast. It’s more fun and interesting that way.”
