Really Happy Someday

Bluesky

Puberty is never easy. Whilst girls struggle with menstruation and the impact of breast growth on the way the world sees them, for boys the most difficult part is often the breaking of the voice, which can make it difficult to speak in some cases and can take months to become complete. For trans boys, of course, this process tends to take place later in life. In adolescence there is at least the comfort of having one’s peers go through it at the same time. It’s a lonely thing to navigate in adulthood, and difficult in the extreme if one happens to have built up a career as a professional singer.

J Stevens’ indie drama, which screened as part of BFI Flare 2025, opens in a waiting room where assorted people in their twenties and thirties are sitting around looking nervous. Z (Breton Lalama) may have been there for an hour or so, but he’s been waiting for years, training every day, to get an opportunity like this. It’s an audition for a role in Les Miserables on Broadway. It could be his big breakthrough. But a few months ago he started on testosterone, and as he lets flow with the lyrics that could change his whole life, his voice gives way and he loses it. It’s excruciating to watch. He’s brave, trying to persevere, but it is quickly made clear to him that he has no place there.

Is there, then, any place for him? He hums as he walks home, and even that is hard to control. It’s difficult to explain the situation to people when his girlfriend Dani (Khadijah Roberts-Abdullah) is excitedly telling everyone that he’s going to be a star. His agent immediately suggests that they refocus and look for opportunities for him in film and TV, but that’s not where his heart is, so he gets a job in a bar instead, and this leads to an unexpected encounter with someone who can better understand his struggle. Someone who recommends a voice coach and helps him take the first step on a long journey to reclaim his skill and his sense of self.

The film hinges on amazing vocal work by Lalama. It takes advantage of the fact that during filming he was at a similar stage in his own transition – really the only way to do it without relying on special effects – but if anything that must have made it more difficult to perform some sections on cue, and emotionally taxing besides. For Z, losing the ability to sing has far-reaching implications because it was a passion as much as a career, and one of the ways that he coped with dysphoria when he was younger. In attempting to cope with the stress, he turns to straight whisky and the occasional cigarette, both things that transmasculine people have historically used to roughen their voices, but counterproductive for a singer. His whole life is rearranged by the process of adjustment, something which might be seen as a microcosm of transition more generally, but as he goes through it he learns to find positive as well as negative aspects to this, and to realise that only by embracing change can he find his way to a life that gives him what he wants – even if it takes a while to figure out what that is.

Really Happy Someday is a fine demonstration of that old storytelling maxim that the more specific the subject, the wider the appeal. Far from speaking only to a niche audience, the film has, in its particularity, a significance and intensity that will appeal to viewers from all backgrounds. If you’ve ever wanted to develop improved control over your own voice – which lots of people do, for lots of different reasons – then you’ll find it educational. There’s a key scene at a karaoke event where Z remembers that singing isn’t just about meeting professional standards, but that it can be a joyous experience even if it isn’t perfect – and that imperfection is normal and human.

Despite the strain of the experience for Z, for the viewer, time flies by, with an absorbing narrative and skillful pacing. The supporting performances are fresh and natural, contrasting with Lalama’s tension, so that when he finally lets himself go you will need to be hard-hearted indeed not to be carried along.