Happy End

A bit of a non-event really imo. The cast is excellent but the story is totally unsatisfactory and the end is just a mess.

I see no meaningful nuances or anything to make it remotely exciting but I did enjoy the the cinematography and the locations. In some ways this is a typically French film where nothing really happens but we're all supposed to think we've missed something.

No cigar.

A French drama; A story about a young girl sent to stay in Calais with her father's dysfunctional bourgeois family, who have their own problems. This is a stark, unforgiving, satire, sharp in meaning about a particular type of upper-middle-class family. Filmed like a puzzle, it is absorbing at times but also can be maddening due to its slow pace. Set in coastal Northern France, it covers topics such as family despair and dysfunction, personal self-destruction, intergenerational revenge, and suppression of guilt. One interesting aspect of the story is the surveillance and video recording devices used for illustrating sordid desire and longing. As an aside, director Michael Haneke has built a reputation for making films that confront his audiences to make them feel uncomfortable, and there is little let-up with this offering.

Forget all other reviews. Agree that Haneke is not for everybody. Not absolutely sure it is his best. As with most movies these days, one has trouble finding one's bearings during the first half hour or so. So may need to be watched more than once and it definitely should be watched twice at least.

The movie is very Haneke, very contemporary, A fresco of today's human condition by looking at the exquisitely delineated characters within an upper class French family. Hupert and Trintignant brilliant as usual, the teenager protagonist a total revelation. Technology, immigration, race and inequality traumas thrown in along with the usual dose of existential angst.

Likely to become a cult movie. Don't miss it.

If anybody thought after seeing 'Amour' and especially its ending that Michael Haneke turned to be a little bit softer towards its characters and show them some mercy, than his or her expectations will be definitely be contradicted by his most recent film 'Happy End', which to many extends deals with the same theme - the end of the road that expects us all, death and how to cope with it.

The high bourgeoisie class had already had its prime time in cinema. Luis Buñuel is the first great director who comes to my mind, with his sharp and cynical visions in movies like 'The Exterminating Angel' and 'The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie' . Their universe receives a deep and detailed description in this film, we are in the 21st century but the change seems to be more in technology rather than in morals, inner relations, or the way the upper classes relate to the world around - servants in the house, partners and employees in business, or the immigrants of different colors of skin who also populate the Europe of our times. The name of the film, 'Happy End' may as well refer to the sunset of this social class or to the mercy killings of the old and suffering.

We know from his previous films that Michael Haneke is not concerned about breaking taboos. This film attacks several as well. Innocence of child is one of them, the young age being seen not that much as an ideal age, but rather as the period when seeds of evil are being sown. We have seen something similar in 'The White Ribbon'. Respectability of the old age is another, and the character and interpretation of Jean-Louis Trintignant is the proof. There is decency in his attitude, but it derives from a very different place than the usual convention. At some point it seems that the old Monsieur Laurent tells a story that happened to the character also played by Trintignant in 'Amour'. Themes are recurring, but what the attitude of the script writer and director is as non-conventional as ever. One new perspective in this film is the exposure to the Internet and to social networking. These play an important role in the story, part of the characters share their feelings and send their hidden messages in the apparent darkness of the digital networking. The sharp critic of the director towards the surrogates of human communication is evident, but he also borrows brilliantly the format of the smartphones screens and uses them to open and close his film. 'Happy End' is (almost) another masterpiece by Michael Haneke.

Greetings again from the darkness. Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke has blessed us with, what I consider, at least five excellent movies (AMOUR, THE WHITE RIBBON, CACHE, FUNNY GAMES, THE PIANO TEACHER), and though it's been 5 years since his last, there is always a welcome anticipation for his next project. Unfortunately, this latest is esoteric and disjointed even beyond his usual style. In fact, at face value, it just seems only to be an accusation lobbed at the wealthy, stating that their privilege and cluelessness brings nothing but misery and difficulty to themselves and the rest of society.

We open on an unknown kid's secretive cell phone video filming of her mother getting ready for bed, followed by the mistreatment of a pet hamster as a lab rat, and finally video of her mother passed out on the sofa - just prior to an ambulance being called. Our attention is then turned to a family estate in Calais, which is inhabited by the octogenarian patriarch Georges (Jean-Louis Trintigant), his doctor son Thomas (Mathieu Kassovitz) and daughter Anne (Isabelle Huppert), Anne's malcontent son Pierre (Franz Rogowski), Thomas' wife and infant son, and the Moroccan couple who are household servants. While her mother is being treated for an overdose, 13 year old Eve (Fantine Harduin), moves in to the estate (Thomas is her re-married father). It's here that we learn the opening scenes were Eve's video work ... clearly establishing her as a damaged soul.

Initially, it seems as though we will see the family through Eve's eye, but what follows instead is the peeling back of family layers exposing the darkness and menace that haunts each of these characters. Georges appears to be intent on finding a way out of the life that has imprisoned his body and is now slowly taking his mind through dementia. Thomas is carrying on an illicit affair through raunchy email exchanges. Anne is trying to protect the family construction business from the incompetence of her son Pierre, while also looking for love with solicitor Toby Jones. At times, we are empathetic towards Eve's situation, but as soon as we let down our guard, her true colors emerge. The film is certainly at its best when Ms. Harduin's Eve is front and center. Her scene with her grandfather Georges uncovers their respective motivators, and is chilling and easily the film's finest moment.

The film was a Cannes Palme d'Or nominee, but we sense that was in respect to Mr. Haneke's legacy, and not for this particular film. The disjointed pieces lack the necessary mortar, or even a linking thread necessary for a cohesive tale. What constitutes a happy end ... or is one even possible? Perhaps that's the theme, but the film leaves us with a feeling of incompleteness - or perhaps Haneke just gave up trying to find such an ending, and decided commentary on the "bourgeois bubble" was sufficient.