Review of Happy End (2017) by Jluis_001 — 01 Mar 2018

I'm perplexed and at the same time intrigued but also I'm a bit disappointed.

Happy End can be considered a pretentious, somber, provocative and certainly ambitious film. It includes a social criticism and simultaneously a look at the dark side of human nature. A basic and recurring theme in Michael Haneke's filmography and yet and although I know this sounds weird, Happy End feels like a movie made by someone else trying to make a film with Haneke's style.

I'm thinking about it but Happy End ultimately feels banal. I know it's a very strong word to describe a film by Michael Haneke but what I saw and felt with the film seems true to that description, because the story, the themes and what surrounds the characters, feels that way and I must point out that that has nothing to do with the overall quality of the film, the problem is that the characters feel empty even in spite of their secretive personalities and their problems.

Happy Ending tells a story that has characters that are manipulative, greedy, unfaithful and carefree. A bourgeois family that at first might seem to suffer of trivial problems, but knowing Haneke we know it's not the case.

We got to know Georges Laurent (Jean-Louis Trintignant), an elderly man and family patriarch who sufferes dementia and who also suffocated his own wife years before and now has a fervent desire to practice euthanasia and join his wife.

I must mention the obvious reference to the characters and events of Amour, in addition to the fact that Trintignant's character is called exactly the same and Isabelle Huppert plays his daughter again, although Happy End is not a sequel to Amour, you can actually create the illusion that it is.

Like I said, George wants to die but nobody is willing to help him, except someone too young who already seems to be emotionally and psychologically damaged, I mean his granddaughter, Ève (Fantine Harduin) who at the beginning of the film gives us a little look at something that apparently is very wrong with her. I can't say anything else because I would screw up the plot.

Needless to say, Happy End is a mystery, it's a complex one and its characters are discomfort, however you have to decipher most of the narrative because they all have secrets and obviously they hide them from the rest, they're all part of the problem regardless of whether some of them are not very interesting, however it's the final part that turns out to be the most provocative, because they all take a backseat except Georges and Ève because they both take disturbing decisions that end the film in an open and yet shocking way.

Needless to say that anyone who is not accustomed to Haneke's work or frankly are not interested in this type of film will not find something engaging but sure you can try it, I never try to discourage people's options.

No doubt this film is a good work but feel less in the career of this cinematographic titan and for the huge expectations I had, I can say I expected more and I definitively wanted more.