Happy End

Selected to compete for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, Happy End is a foreign art house drama written and directed by Austrian Michael Haneke. The film stars Isabelle Huppert, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Mathieu Kassovitz, Franz Rogowski and Toby Jones plus more.

The story surrounds a wealthy French family living in Calais. After teenager Eve undetectably poisons her mother with sedatives, she is sent to live with her father and his new wife at the family mansion. While Eve is dealing with her depression the rest of the family are dealing with dramas of their own. An affair, an injury, a lawsuit and the grandfathers want to escape dementia and frailty.

Happy End was a struggle to watch with the storyline choppy and often confusing. There were too many unnecessary long shots to count and having absolutely no score made the film feel dull. Unless you are a huge fan of Haneke, don’t waste the money on seeing this at the cinema.

★

Reviewed by Riley Hooper