Happy End

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, intermittently absorbing satire on a type of upper-middle-class family. Filmed as if like a puzzle, it is arguably maddening because of its slow pace, but it is sharp in meaning. 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.