Young Stan has a hard time dealing with the way his mother’s late-stage cancer is rapidly changing her body. By way of autotherapy, he bandages his face and sneaks into a self-help group for people with disfigured faces. While the group leader tries to instruct the participants to love themselves and get all cuddly, Stan incites a rebellion in this band of outsiders against the exclusionary normative society. Happy Face is a movie of riotous empowerment, spiritually following in the footsteps of Tod Browning’s masterpiece Freaks.