Happy End
Two times Cannes winner, Michael Haneke, hits again with yet another nihilist film that attacks the middle-upper class. Focusing on a bourgeois family in the north of France, the Laurents, each member representing a different aspect of society's faults, the director explores the cold modern relationships between people that are supposed to care for each other.
Jean-Luis Trintignant and Isabelle Huppert repeat as father and daughter after the laureated Amour. Trintignant (his character is again called George) is the patriarch of a rich family, who is suffering the effects of senility, and that constantly has "accidents" that put at risk his life. Just as he did in Amour, Haneke explores difficult existential topics, such as the right to decide about the termination of one's life and assisted death for compassion. As an elderly character who is less and less in control of himself, George's only desire is to put an end to his suffering, but he is firmly opposed by his family, who want to see him alive to celebrate his 80th birthday.
But George is not the only character with morbid fantasies. The young Ève, his grand-daughter also flirts with her own death, and Haneke is merciless in his portrayal of a prepubescent girl, never condescending at infantilizing her. On the contrary, we are very able to see her complex personality; it's a Virgin Suicide in the age of Snapchat stories. Fantine Harduin exceeds expectations: in a film full of legendary actors offering amazing performances, she is the one who steals the show.
George's children are hopeless as well. Isabelle Huppert plays Anne, a business woman who has to deal with the accident on one of her construction sites that cost the life of an immigrant worker, and with her own son, a young man very unfit to inherit the family business. Her brother, Thomas (played by Matthieu Kassovitz), has to take care of Ève after his ex-wife ended up in hospital from an overdose of anti-depression pills, and even if he now has a lovely new wife and a new-born, he exchanges spicy messages online with a new lover. In short, this family is forced to live together, but the affection existing in between them seems to be fake, at its best, or inexistent at its worst.
Haneke, again, takes a voyeuristic approach to portray the life of this family. Wide static long shots abound, a style very characteristic of him; but the stylistic novelty in Happy End is that we are treated to Snapchat histories, YouTube videos and Facebook chats as if the cinema screen was our own mobile device, as a meta-comment on how technology alienates people: Thomas texts his lover about intense fetish sexual acts, but then appears in his bed with a straight face while typing them.
In between all this dehumanization, the only real bond seems to surge from the most unexpected members of the family and for the most inadequate reason possible. It's a cold, cryptic and complex work that certainly won't please crowds, but a film that is very intellectually rewarding if one decides to take the loose ends home to tie them on one's own. You're certainly not going to find a happy end here, but the title itself has multiple interpretations after watching this gloomy film. One might rightfully say that Happy End is not at the height of Haneke's previous films, Amour and Das Weisse Band, but those two are timeless cinema masterpieces. Happy End, instead, is a very specific critic to Occidental society here and now; it's also Haneke presenting a fully mature style while also taking new risks in his stylistic approach.
