Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter to Los Angeles
Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter to Los Angeles is a 2021 American concert film directed by Robert Rodriguez and Patrick Osborne, starring singer-songwriter Billie Eilish. It features performances of all 16 tracks from Eilish's second studio album, Happier Than Ever (2021), at the Hollywood Bowl amphitheater. She is accompanied by other musicians, including her brother Finneas O'Connell and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Inspired by films such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) and Cool World (1992), A Love Letter to Los Angeles blends live action and animation.
Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter to Los Angeles
- Michelle An
- Chelsea Dodson
- Juliet Tierney
Billie Eilish
Pablo Berron
John Paul Guerrera Horstmann (sup.)
Patrick Osborne
- Interscope Films
- Darkroom Productions
- Nexus Studios
- Aron Levine Productions
- Double R Productions
- September 3, 2021
65 minutes
United States
English
Besides directing, Osborne worked on the animation in collaboration with Nexus Studios, Zoic Studios, and Digital Frontier FX, mixing motion capture footage with rotoscoping techniques. Filming took place for one week in Los Angeles, mostly at the Hollywood Bowl, without a live audience due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The crew aimed to avoid making the performances feel too similar, so they produced distinct color palettes and lighting effects for every song. They often recorded Eilish from close distances, wanting to create a sense of intimacy between her and the viewers.
A Love Letter to Los Angeles was released exclusively to Disney+ on September 3, 2021. Critics praised its performances—which they felt were of similar or better quality compared to the songs' studio versions—as well as its animation, cinematography, and setting. It received nominations for Best Austin Film at the 2021 Austin Film Critics Association Awards, Best Music Film at the 64th Annual Grammy Awards, and Best Longform Video at the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards.
Plot [edit]
The film begins by showing a two-dimensional, animated version of American singer-songwriter Billie Eilish in a recording studio. Picking up a microphone, she leaves the place and drives a Porsche to visit landmarks around Los Angeles. Meanwhile, her live-action self performs the tracks from her second studio album, Happier Than Ever (2021), at the Hollywood Bowl.
Eilish starts with the song "Getting Older", covered in blue lighting as the camera spins around her. The lights switch to a red-orange color for "I Didn't Change My Number". A symphony orchestra accompanies her during the next two performances, the first of which is "Billie Bossa Nova". While Eilish sings the next song, "My Future", a wide shot depicts her animated counterpart on the rooftop of the Roosevelt Hotel, looking across the Los Angeles skyline and contemplating. The animated version returns to her Porsche to drive around the city at high speed.
Back at the Hollywood Bowl, the live-action Eilish prepares for a performance of "Oxytocin". As she sings the song, red lights pulsate in the background; the screen turns to black and white during two verses, and she belts some of the closing lines. Nighttime passes, and the next morning, the animated Eilish awakes to find herself among the clouds, about to sprout angel wings. For "Goldwing", a children's chorus performs its first verse, an excerpt from a religious hymn. They act as backing vocals for Eilish during the rest of the number, and the orchestra reappears to provide accompaniment to go with electronic music. The choir and orchestra are gone once the next song, "Lost Cause", begins. Eilish's performance is interspersed with shots of the Porsche as it travels through Los Angeles at night.
During "Halley's Comet", Eilish returns with the orchestra for another number, and she looks up to see the eponymous comet pass through the sky. Her animated version, sitting in an empty restaurant, also notices the comet. Eilish delivers a spoken-word interlude with "Not My Responsibility" and monologues about the public's obsession with her physical appearance. Shown as a silhouette against a black and red background, her animated self slowly takes her clothes off, is picked apart into bifurcated clones, and submerges herself in water. She rises from the water then levitates, after which the camera transitions back to her live-action self, about to perform "Overheated" with red lights and smoke around her. With "Everybody Dies", the animated Eilish visits a cemetery, and the orchestra helps with the instrumentals.
For "Your Power", Eilish duets with her brother Finneas O'Connell, who plays the acoustic guitar. Her animated counterpart arrives at the Palladium theater, after which paparazzi gather around the entrance to take pictures. Close-up shots of Eilish's face repeatedly flash on the screen as she sings "NDA" with distorted vocals, and the orchestra appears one final time for "Therefore I Am". During the performance of the title track, the animated Eilish enters the Hollywood Bowl while a spotlight follows her every move. She notices her live-action counterpart, who sees her and smiles at her, and takes a seat at the front row to watch the performance. The live-action Eilish headbangs and thrashes around the stage once the electric guitar appears in the song. She closes the film with the stripped-back "Male Fantasy"; as the song ends, flowers appear all over the Hollywood Bowl. The animated Eilish, still watching, disappears from sight, a smile on her face.
Production[edit]
Development[edit]
Eilish was born and spent her formative years in Los Angeles, developing an intense emotional attachment to the city. As she explained on Good Morning America, "I don't think I'd have any of the same anything if it wasn't for my hometown. I owed Los Angeles some love."[7] She came up with Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter to Los Angeles as a way to pay tribute to the city, intending it to be about self-reflection and growth.[8][9] With regard to its visual style, she envisioned it to combine live action and animation, a "dimension that [she had] never experimented in", and felt that Disney would help her with the goal.[10]
Marketing and release[edit]
Eilish announced A Love Letter to Los Angeles on July 22, 2021, eight days before the release of Happier Than Ever. A teaser trailer was revealed alongside the announcement.[23][24][25] Another teaser trailer premiered on August 4,[26] and an official trailer premiered 20 days later.[2][27] The first clip offered a small glimpse of the film's animation; the other two put more focus on that element.[28]
After the trailers were revealed, many journalists immediately compared Eilish's animated character to a Disney Princess,[17] including MTV News's Athena Serrano and Billboard's Gill Kaufman.[19][29] Ben Pearson of /Film likened her to a less-sexualized version of the character Holli Would from Cool World.[30] Three days before the film screening, Eilish shared a video of the "Oxytocin" performance on social media.[31][32][33] Released as a Disney+ exclusive,[34][35] A Love Letter to Los Angeles premiered worldwide on September 3, 2021. Disney+ made the film available to watch with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos.[36]
Reception[edit]
Thematic analysis[edit]
Larisha Paul, a writer for the Recording Academy, cited freedom from fame as a recurring theme of A Love Letter to Los Angeles. In the film, Eilish's animated counterpart drives through the Highland Park neighborhood, where she used to live before she moved away due to security concerns such as experiences with stalkers.[22] She references similar privacy-breaching encounters in the lyrics to "Getting Older", "Billie Bossa Nova", and "NDA".[37] According to Paul, the animated counterpart, by travelling around several locations in Los Angeles, demonstrates freedom that the live-action Eilish does not possess, reminding viewers of the life she had before the massive success of her debut studio album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? (2019). As she drives, she sees many billboards used to promote Happier Than Ever by the roads of the city. In Paul's view, this reinforces "the ironclad inescapability of fame" and the conversations that result, such as the ones referenced in the "Not My Responsibility" interlude.[22]
In a review for Billboard, Sydney Urbanek analyzed how Los Angeles might connect to the film's plot. Her argument was that the city functions as a setting for the stories told through the album's lyrics—she interpreted the plot as Eilish's attempt to fix her estranged relationship with Los Angeles, caused by certain traumatic experiences discussed in the songs she performs. To back this up, she cited the album's exploration of Eilish's past relationships and lack of privacy. Urbanek also pointed to one line in the penultimate song, the title track, which reads "I'd never treat me this shitty / You made me hate this city." She called its performance the film's culminating moment,[37] a sentiment Paul shared. Discussing Eilish's encounter with her animated counterpart during the scene, Paul said: "[her] ongoing theme of solitude, and the autonomy found within that [...] speaks to the one consistency between where Eilish has been and where she's headed: herself."[22]
Critical response[edit]
Some critics deemed A Love Letter to Los Angeles a film that Eilish's fans would enjoy. Johnny Loftus recommended watching it in a review for the website Decider, certain that it would "make her thriving fan base swoon",[38] and Jennifer Green, an author for Common Sense Media, wrote that Eilish's followers would "enjoy parsing her lyrics for biographical details and references" while viewing the film.[13] Urbanek considered its release as a way to satisfy fans with live performances before they got to see Eilish during the world tour in support of the album. However, she warned against reducing it to a "mere gift" to them: "there's simply too much at work conceptually to dismiss it as [such]."[37]
The Hollywood Bowl setting was a point of commentary for two critics, who praised it for effectively bolstering the film's tribute premise. The New York Times's Teo Bugbee, who called the choice of location as the "best tribute" to Los Angeles, noted how the concert venue was empty for the whole runtime, arguing that this highlighted the city's "star-struck hauntedness" well.[39] Uproxx contributor Rachel Brodsky agreed and found the choice appropriate because of the Hollywood Bowl's significance to Los Angeles's music and film scenes.[40]
The film received some praise for its animation and cinematography. Urbanek lauded the way that A Love Letter to Los Angeles mixed animation with live action footage, and she found the variety in camerawork appropriate for an album that is varied in themes and tones.[37] Loftus focused on its use of lighting, as well as the aesthetic and color schemes employed for the animated sequences; he believed that the sequences succeeded in establishing the mood for the performances despite looking substantially different from the live footage.[38] In contrast to Urbanek and Loftus, Green wrote the scenes of the animated Eilish were unnecessary. For her, the music and the live-action character do enough to convey the right emotions and the stories told by the songs.[13]
The concert numbers were another aspect of the film that critics praised. They thought that the songs' live renditions sounded as good as or better than their studio versions, often attributing the quality to the Los Angeles Philharmonic's involvement.[37][40][41] Loftus was impressed by Eilish's voice, which he called "striking"—he sensed improvement in her vocals and saw the film as an opportunity for her to prove her ability to sing live. He concluded that the performances in A Love Letter to Los Angeles rightly emphasized Eilish's artistry, music, and nuanced character in spite of all the media narratives about her.[38]
Callie Ahlgrim of Insider selected the live renditions of some of her favorite tracks from the album—"Oxytocin", "Halley's Comet", and the title track—as the film's highlights.[41] Urbanek thought the title track performance lost some impact as a result of Disney's censorship of the word fuck in the lyrics, but she wrote that the song's cathartic nature was still preserved in the film.[37] The "Goldwing" performance was singled out for praise in several reviews; it was regarded as more beautiful than the song's studio version thanks to the presence of the Children's Chorus, of which Eilish used to be a member. The reviewers found their reunion through the film sentimental.[38][37][40][41]
On a more critical note, Ahgrim was not impressed with the film as a whole, finding that without any memorable conceptual risks or a "palpable buzz" from a live audience, A Love Letter to Los Angeles felt underwhelming like the album itself.[41] Meanwhile, Brodsky wrote the absence of an audience made the viewing experience more heartwarming. For Brodsky, criticisms were instead directed towards the performances' monochrome color schemes and Eilish's vocals, which she thought came across as pre-recorded and not live.[40]
Accolades[edit]
A Love Letter to Los Angeles was shortlisted for Best Austin Film at the 2021 Austin Film Critics Association Awards, held on January 11, 2022. Other contenders included the 2020 releases The Carnivores, The Get Together, and Queens of Pain, as well as the winner Without Getting Killed or Caught (2021).[42][43] On November 23, 2021, the Recording Academy announced the 64th Annual Grammy Awards nominees, which included A Love Letter to Los Angeles for Best Music Film.[44] The ceremony was held on April 3, 2022, and the documentary Summer of Soul (2021) won the award.[45] A Love Letter to Los Angeles was also nominated for Best Longform Video at the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards.[46]