The Joy of Life

Filmmaker Jenni Olson muses about her personal relationships and her "butch" identity, wondering whether taking such a masculine-ish identity is anti-feminist or even internally misogynistic. Most of the film is Jenni's voice over scenes of various neighborhoods in San Francisco, some almost static, others full of activity. The film then dives into a seemingly unrelated topic, suicide, most especially suicide from the Golden Gate Bridge, where a close friend jumped ten years ago. The connection is in the title of the film: The Joy of Life. Each of us must find our own joy of life, including comfort in our own gender identity and relationships.

This highly enjoyable feature would be most accurately described as experimental. What makes it so is that The Joy of Life is composed of several parts that are quite different from each other. Only the visual approach remains constant: static and depopulated vistas of one of the world's beautiful cities: San Francisco and the Bay Area.

The first part involves voice-over readings from the diary of a butch lesbian experiencing romantic and sexual longing. I don't know whether these are the experiences of a fictional character or those of writer/director Jenni Olson. The voice we hear is that of San Francisco-based filmmaker Harriet "Harry" Dodge (By Hook or by Crook). This part of The Joy of Life resembles the director's short Blue Diary, which is also included on the DVD. Part two is very brief. Lawrence Ferlinghetti reads his evocative poem "The Changing Light" while the screen remains completely black. Part three revolves around the complex production histories of two classic films with suicidal characters: Capra's Meet John Doe and Hitchcock's Vertigo. Part four concerns the Golden Gate Bridge as a suicide mecca (the film is dedicated to one of the over 1300 people who've jumped to their deaths, a friend of the director who committed suicide in 1994). The Joy of Life documents the failed efforts by suicide prevention advocates to erect a barrier to prevent people from taking the 220 ft. plunge. Ms. Olson is clearly an advocate of erecting a barrier, as it was done for the Eiffel Tower and other suicide landmarks around the world.

The Joy of Life is brilliantly executed and practically impossible to classify as a whole. It is a personal confessional, a poetry reading, an essay film, and a social-advocacy documentary. What holds it together is the filmmaker's love for San Francisco and its residents.