Fifi Howls from Happiness
Music Box Films | Release Date: August 8, 2014 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
76
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 11 Critic Reviews
Positive:
10
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Time OutKeith UhlichAug 5, 2014
You might actually say the documentary itself is Mohassess’s final canvas, so infused it becomes with his alternately infuriating and infectious personality. Read full review
90
Village VoiceMichael AtkinsonAug 5, 2014
The lovely ball-&-socket meeting of the two artists' sensibilities is what makes the doc sing, even if it is a chronicle of a death foretold. Read full review
88
Slant MagazineDiego SemereneAug 4, 2014
Mitra Farahani rescues the doc from becoming a talking-head fest by embracing her creative self as a character and exposing the travails of her own authorship process. Read full review
80
VarietyStaff [Not Credited]Aug 7, 2014
Though shy on background info, the docu offers a fascinating portrait. Read full review
75
Boston GlobePeter KeoughOct 31, 2014
In person, as seen in Fifi Howls From Happiness, Mitra Farahani’s ambitious and self-reflexive documentary of the artist’s last days, Mohassess enthusiastically acts out those traits. It’s a performance enhanced by his diabolical, phlegm-choked laughter at his own bleakly ironic pronouncements and denunciations of the world in general. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comGodfrey CheshireAug 8, 2014
As if to confirm how crucial timing is to documentaries, the artist gives the filmmaker a last performance that helps make her portrait of him as extraordinary as the man it portrays. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleAug 13, 2014
By its bittersweet end, Fifi Howls From Happiness has stayed almost entirely in one apartment and yet somehow unveiled both a life in full and a blank canvas. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterFrank ScheckAug 7, 2014
A provocative portrait of an artist who seemed hell-bent on destroying his own legacy. Read full review
70
The New York TimesManohla DargisAug 7, 2014
A portrait of the artist as a refusenik, a recluse, a survivor and a stubborn question mark, “Fifi Howls From Happiness” registers, by turns, as a celebration, an excavation and an increasingly urgent rescue mission. Read full review
67
The A.V. ClubBenjamin MercerOct 13, 2015
Though Farahani takes care to pose her project as both a portrait of and an intervention in Mohasses’ life, it winds up being considerably less interesting as the latter. Read full review
60
The DissolveCharles BramescoAug 5, 2014
Farahani’s elegiac documentary takes far more interest in Mohassess the man than Mohassess the artist. Read full review
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