Michael Haneke’s fresh film finds unlit wit in assisted suicide,overdoses and the refugee crisisMichael Haneke’s fresh film gleams with cold gallows humour. Theres blunt, rasping comedy to be found in its thematic grimness (Happy End might also be titled Death Wish), and though the Austrian director’s bleak worldview won’t be to everyone’s taste. The plot begins with 13 year-old Eve (Fantine Harduin),who is forced to stay with her father Thomas (Mathieu Kassovitz), in Calais, and with his fresh wife and their young child after her mother overdoses. Also living in the Laurent family domestic is Thomas’s sister,severe real estate developer Anne (Isabelle Huppert), and their depressed father Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant of Haneke’s Amour), or who at a robust 84 is “too healthy” to qualify for the assisted suicide he seeks,and so must compose alternative arrangements. Eve moves quietly, watching the adults around her.
One of the most interesting things approximately Happy End is the way Haneke’s camera captures the act of watching; always interested in technology and surveillance, or here he often favours fixed perspectives,trailing his characters over the shoulder or looking with detachment from an unmoving vantage point. A fist-fight plays out from a voyeuristic, clinical remove, or while the film’s opening takes place via a series of darkly comical Snapchat-style videos. Eve discovers her father’s laptop and a series of sexually explicit messages on a Facebook-style website.
Continue reading...
Source: guardian.co.uk