User reviews

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.

Greetings again from the darkness. Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke has blessed us with, what I consider, at least five excellent movies (AMOUR, THE WHITE RIBBON, CACHE, FUNNY GAMES, THE PIANO TEACHER), and though it's been 5 years since his last, there is always a welcome anticipation for his next project. Unfortunately, this latest is esoteric and disjointed even beyond his usual style. In fact, at face value, it just seems only to be an accusation lobbed at the wealthy, stating that their privilege and cluelessness brings nothing but misery and difficulty to themselves and the rest of society.

We open on an unknown kid's secretive cell phone video filming of her mother getting ready for bed, followed by the mistreatment of a pet hamster as a lab rat, and finally video of her mother passed out on the sofa - just prior to an ambulance being called. Our attention is then turned to a family estate in Calais, which is inhabited by the octogenarian patriarch Georges (Jean-Louis Trintigant), his doctor son Thomas (Mathieu Kassovitz) and daughter Anne (Isabelle Huppert), Anne's malcontent son Pierre (Franz Rogowski), Thomas' wife and infant son, and the Moroccan couple who are household servants. While her mother is being treated for an overdose, 13 year old Eve (Fantine Harduin), moves in to the estate (Thomas is her re-married father). It's here that we learn the opening scenes were Eve's video work ... clearly establishing her as a damaged soul.

Initially, it seems as though we will see the family through Eve's eye, but what follows instead is the peeling back of family layers exposing the darkness and menace that haunts each of these characters. Georges appears to be intent on finding a way out of the life that has imprisoned his body and is now slowly taking his mind through dementia. Thomas is carrying on an illicit affair through raunchy email exchanges. Anne is trying to protect the family construction business from the incompetence of her son Pierre, while also looking for love with solicitor Toby Jones. At times, we are empathetic towards Eve's situation, but as soon as we let down our guard, her true colors emerge. The film is certainly at its best when Ms. Harduin's Eve is front and center. Her scene with her grandfather Georges uncovers their respective motivators, and is chilling and easily the film's finest moment.

The film was a Cannes Palme d'Or nominee, but we sense that was in respect to Mr. Haneke's legacy, and not for this particular film. The disjointed pieces lack the necessary mortar, or even a linking thread necessary for a cohesive tale. What constitutes a happy end ... or is one even possible? Perhaps that's the theme, but the film leaves us with a feeling of incompleteness - or perhaps Haneke just gave up trying to find such an ending, and decided commentary on the "bourgeois bubble" was sufficient.

"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

If you'd like to feel good about your family, then see Happy End, written and directed by an Austrian, Michael Haneke, with a dollop of Euro horror that seems to combine elements of Roman Polanski and Mike Nichols. This family flirts with self-destruction across the generations.

Patriarch Georges Laurent (Jean-Louis Trintignant) is celebrating his 85th birthday with enough of his wit left to remember he dispatched his ailing wife to the next life out of concern for her pain. Similarly his granddaughter, 13 year old Eve (Fantine Harduin), attempted to poison a classmate and recently to commit suicide. Across the generations, this is not a happy family. However, a happy end they may have if even-keeled, task-oriented Georges' daughter, Anne (Isabelle Huppert), prevails. Not likely.

For all their wealth, each member, even comely and charming daughter Anne, is unhappy, she with a grown son, Pierre (Franz Rogowski), who is not socially or mentally well balanced. He can't even sing Karaoke without endangering his life. That Karaoke scene is a keeper in modern cinema.

Yet the family does ritual dining and socializing, right down to inviting friends and relatives to an intimate concert that is not euphonious to say the least. Just another off-balance moment. All the pretty dining and servants can't mask the undercurrent of familial larceny.

Haneke's use of modern technology from the live-streaming video during the opening bathroom scene to the exposure of a love affair through instant messaging casts an unflattering, harsh light on whatever the family may want to hide but can't. Even a work accident is seen through a security camera. As in Haneke's Cache, surveillance is revealing but never a solution.

Anne's engagement party could have been the democratizing of this family, but rather becomes a debacle when Pierre brings unannounced African immigrants with the beginnings of a diatribe against immigration policies. The result is mutilation, not reconciliation.

Happy End will not have a happy end for audiences unwilling to do some heavy thinking about the various puzzle pieces from each episode that eventually create a mosaic of modern bourgeois dysfunction. As such, the film may be difficult and tedious for general audiences.

Privilege has inured the principals to the plight of the servants in their household (the dog-bite sequence is particularly unnerving) and the unwanted immigrants at their wedding. This scurrilous neglect, passed down to generations, reflects not just a French problem (they are in Calais, after all, the port for refugee chaos) when the audience may consider the growing class disparities around the world and callous care about the poor and homeless.

Happy End, in the end, is about cankerous abandon in privilege, whose end may be no less than murder and suicide. Whatever, it's not pretty but a rewarding artistic experience.

Beautiful, tender as flower and " light" in terms of Haneke's style - I expected it to be hard & taught.

Movie appeared to be the life story of few generations that are stuck in life. Somebody succeeds to leave successfully, somebody - not. Those who stuck do not suffer - they just lead the regular life - betray wife, indulge in sexual experiments, fight with spoiled kids, try to help refugees, solve probs at work & at home - regular lifetime routine.

In some moments boring (by the way, as our everyday life) and in some extremely beautiful as the sea, movie is calm, tranquil and spectacular.

We are all stuck and it's up to us to decide which direction to go - to go in or to go out.

I would like to write about last episodes of the movie: touching, deep, white, bright sea and the seaside are reminding me Marcelle Proust and Balbec times of his novel...

One can watch and be bored from the watching- but, probably, this is exactly the effect Haneke is aiming to achieve.

If anybody thought after seeing 'Amour' and especially its ending that Michael Haneke turned to be a little bit softer towards its characters and show them some mercy, than his or her expectations will be definitely be contradicted by his most recent film 'Happy End', which to many extends deals with the same theme - the end of the road that expects us all, death and how to cope with it.

The high bourgeoisie class had already had its prime time in cinema. Luis Buñuel is the first great director who comes to my mind, with his sharp and cynical visions in movies like 'The Exterminating Angel' and 'The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie' . Their universe receives a deep and detailed description in this film, we are in the 21st century but the change seems to be more in technology rather than in morals, inner relations, or the way the upper classes relate to the world around - servants in the house, partners and employees in business, or the immigrants of different colors of skin who also populate the Europe of our times. The name of the film, 'Happy End' may as well refer to the sunset of this social class or to the mercy killings of the old and suffering.

We know from his previous films that Michael Haneke is not concerned about breaking taboos. This film attacks several as well. Innocence of child is one of them, the young age being seen not that much as an ideal age, but rather as the period when seeds of evil are being sown. We have seen something similar in 'The White Ribbon'. Respectability of the old age is another, and the character and interpretation of Jean-Louis Trintignant is the proof. There is decency in his attitude, but it derives from a very different place than the usual convention. At some point it seems that the old Monsieur Laurent tells a story that happened to the character also played by Trintignant in 'Amour'. Themes are recurring, but what the attitude of the script writer and director is as non-conventional as ever. One new perspective in this film is the exposure to the Internet and to social networking. These play an important role in the story, part of the characters share their feelings and send their hidden messages in the apparent darkness of the digital networking. The sharp critic of the director towards the surrogates of human communication is evident, but he also borrows brilliantly the format of the smartphones screens and uses them to open and close his film. 'Happy End' is (almost) another masterpiece by Michael Haneke.

A bit of a non-event really imo. The cast is excellent but the story is totally unsatisfactory and the end is just a mess.

I see no meaningful nuances or anything to make it remotely exciting but I did enjoy the the cinematography and the locations. In some ways this is a typically French film where nothing really happens but we're all supposed to think we've missed something.

No cigar.

An absorbing drama that makes quite a powerful statement about the fragmented nature of modern life. It's a sort-of sequel to Haneke's 'Amour', but the tone is so different I didn't register this at first. The director has a tendency to impose ideas upon the naturalistic flow of a story, twisting characters to the point of implausibility. He can be irritatingly oblique, also. Another criticism is that 'Happy End' has an uncertain mood: it utilises the format of a social comedy, but the sense of underlying dread and menace makes it impossible to read as 'black humour'. Well-acted and impeccably filmed, though.

Like others, the main reason I went to see this film was Michael Haneke. Although I always thought that he lacks humor and takes himself too seriously, he did make some outstanding and memorable films. Unfortunately, this one feels stale, redundant, and out of step with the times. The subject matter, the bourgeoisie entrapped in their self-serving bubble as a theme, has been shown so many times, and in much more poignant ways, including by Haneke himself. This film doesn't add anything new or noteworthy, neither with the story, nor with the style.

The way social media and phone messages are shown also feels embarrassingly dated, like a grandfather explaining this "new" phenomenon. "Cache" was made over a decade ago, and technology and the discourses of its impacts have moved on with furious speed; apparently, Haneke has not. Even the metaphor of using Calais and the migrant 'jungle' as point here misses its mark. It tries to be smart about it, but, once again, it just feels old in its approach.

Interestingly enough, another western European film, the Swedish "The Square," dealt with some similar themes and issues in the same year, but was more successful with its narrative framework and style. "Happy End" just felt boring, not necessarily because of the long takes alone, but because of its uninspired re-threading of familiar ground. Because of that, those long takes eventually really did become boring. Perhaps Haneke will resurface with some interesting new work, or perhaps it is really time for him to retire. In any case, I hope the comparisons to Bunuel will cease. Bunuel was a pioneer with his films; this is a film by an old man, who doesn't seem to have much new to say any more.

I viewed Haneke's entire filmography back when it was all available to stream on Netflix, and I believe he's the most important filmmaker alive today. Even his movies that are my least favorite (71 Fragments, Time of the Wolf) have scenes that are mesmerizing, moments of resonance that linger with you long after the credits have rolled. Because I can't say the same for Happy End, I worry that this film might be his most unremarkable.

Certainly, like all of Haneke's films, Happy End is beautifully shot, realistically acted, and has enough suspense, tension, and thought-provoking insight to keep the mind active. A scene late in the film between the patriarch (Jean-Louis Trintignant, doing a variation of his role in Amour) and his granddaughter (Fantine Harduin) is a standout; for a moment, it seems as though a heartfelt interrogation between a man at the end of his life and a woman at the beginning of hers might reveal some secret about the ultimate meaning of living, though of course it turns out that neither of them has any idea what it all means. This scene intrigued me, but it still left me disappointed.

Likewise with the climax, which, I think, attempts to pull off something similar to what he accomplished with Funny Games. Funny Games was ultimately a critique of the spectacle of violent entertainment, frequently asking the viewer to pause and ask, "Why the hell did I pay to see this? What enjoyment or edification was I expecting from seeing a family get tortured?" It seems to me that Happy End hints at something comparable at the dinner party towards the end, when the camera moves away from the suffering of these miserable, self-hating, filthy rich, and terribly boring people in order to briefly highlight the lives of refugees who are trying to escape to the economic opportunities of the UK. Here Haneke seems to ask, Why'd you pay to see the haute bourgeoisie simmer over their self-inflicted "problems" when there are real things at stake in the world? All the same, this jab is perhaps too subtle and ultimately stings of the "contempt for the viewer" that so many detractors have always accused Haneke of having but which I've never actually been able to detect. If that's the case, why make this expensive-looking movie at all? Why not make a different film--either one that more consciously highlights the refugee crisis, or one that more scathingly indicts the chamber drama genre?

Haneke trains his incisive gaze on many interesting issues throughout Happy End--psychopathy, greed, social media, suicide, depression, euthanasia, immigration, class conflict, corporate liability--but what he ultimately stirs up is a lot more tired, a lot less insightful, and far more "meh" than anything he's ever produced before.

Forget all other reviews. Agree that Haneke is not for everybody. Not absolutely sure it is his best. As with most movies these days, one has trouble finding one's bearings during the first half hour or so. So may need to be watched more than once and it definitely should be watched twice at least.

The movie is very Haneke, very contemporary, A fresco of today's human condition by looking at the exquisitely delineated characters within an upper class French family. Hupert and Trintignant brilliant as usual, the teenager protagonist a total revelation. Technology, immigration, race and inequality traumas thrown in along with the usual dose of existential angst.

Likely to become a cult movie. Don't miss it.

The latest from Michael Haneke (The White Ribbon/Amour) is an uneven account of a family in crisis in France. Grandpa wants to kill himself, mom's son is a drunk waste, her brother's ex was hospitalized from an accidental poisoning prompting his estranged daughter to come live w/him as she recuperates which makes his new wife a little edgy & so on & so on. Episodic in the extreme, we never get a sense of a through line story-wise, since Haneke is more interested in juxtaposing our encroaching fascination w/technology (there's a series of bizarre sexualized IM's sent from a laptop screen but we never see who the typist is) rather than genuine human interaction between family members. Starring French greats Jean-Louis Trintignant & Isabelle Huppert, the ensemble cast acquit themselves admirably but the scattershot plotting betrays their good intentions at every turn.

At the beginning of the viewing, my opinion was very skeptical, because there is little good that can be expected from Russian cinema. But this series showed that directors with a new vision of the world can make a quality product and put this series on a par with foreign films that have already earned their approval. On the one hand, it seems that this series is saturated with vulgarity and contains nothing but bed scenes. But as soon as you get used to the world being told, it becomes clear how deep this picture is, in which adult scenes are shown so aesthetic and beautiful that they do not cause a bit of disgust. This is the first series that caused me a storm of positive emotions from all Russian cinema. Many thanks to the director for his willingness to experiment and the desire to show the world unknown actors, and not try to raise the ratings on already well-known faces. This series is worth watching not even for its plot, but for the beauty of the shooting. Although, it is hard to underestimate the plot, because it reflects modern realities and the thirst for quick money, and therefore shows how this money can ruin life.

If I could choose one, highly symbolic film to accompany Douglas Murray's great work entitled The Strange Death of Europe, it would be this.

Ostensibly, this film is about an old upper-class French family who run a construction company. A catastrophe strikes at the building site and a creeping sense of malaise grips the family itself as attempted suicides become more and more commonplace.

Symbolically, this work takes a swipe at the debilitating trivialisation of a Western society increasingly sucked into the world of YouTube idiocy and cyber sex, the erosion of its values, the decaying aftermath of colonialism and the ultimate suicide of Europe at the hands of mass immigration on the one hand, and a society too apathetic and politically correct to offer any resistance on the other.

Marvellous stuff.

From the prodigious Austrian auteur Michael Haneke, prima facie HAPPY END can be construed as a sequel to AMOUR (2012), with both Jean-Louis Trintignant and Isabelle Huppert returning as another father-daughter pair, but scale-wise, it is an upgrade, with Haneke's rapier-like scalpel mirthlessly levering at and dissecting a dysfunctional bourgeois household in Calais under a large milieu.

First thing first, extending his attentive exploration related to what constitutes today's cinematic gaze, Haneke situates his camera on our workaday digital devises, opening with several video clips from a live-recording smartphone (with morbid contents notwithstanding), to the (replay-prompting) footage of a security camera coldly witnessing an abrupt collapse on a construction site, then eyeing erotic exchanges from the screens of a personal email account and a facebook page between two secretive lovers, even to a swaggering Youtube video watched by the 13-year-old Eve Laurent (Harduin, an alumna from Belgium's Got Talent whose speciality is mentalism)....

reading my full review on my blog: cinema omnivore, thanks

The bourgeoisie family at the heart of "Happy End" are totally lacking in charm, discreet or otherwise, but then, this being a Michael Haneke film, perhaps that's only to be expected. Eve, (Fantine Harduin), is the precocious pre-teen girl given to poisoning her pet hamster and probably her mother too, so when mum overdoses and is rushed into hospital Eve goes to live her with estranged father Thomas, (Mathieu Kassovitz), his new wife Anais, (Laura Verlinden) and his larger family, (aunt Isabelle Huppert, cousin Franz Rogowski and grandfather Jean-Louis Trintignant), and this being a Michael Haneke picture they make for an icy bunch of relatives to say the least and in typicial Haneke fashion, nothing seems to be going well for them.

Since "Funny Games" the horrors inherent in Haneke's work have slipped further into the background but they are still there; little by little things happen to ensure that for this family a happy end isn't really on the cards. There's a hole where their hearts should be and even though she was raised away from them, their malaise has affected Eve, too.

I've heard "Happy End" described as a comedy or, at best, a satire but essentially it's just a continuation of Haneke's journey to his heart of darkness, immaculately directed and superbly performed by the entire cast and, of course, Haneke wouldn't be Haneke without a wider malaise lurking around the corner, in this case the immigrant crisis but again, Haneke being Haneke, he keeps this element very much on the fringes. These bourgeoisie are quite capable of messing up their own lives without worrying too much about their North African servants or the immigrants who wander around Calais, where the film is set, and whom errant son Rogowski brings to a family celebration. To my eyes, this is yet another perverse masterpiece in the Haneke canon.

Certainly it's more tough than one which you feel by living alone. This movie criticized the family system which only ties them down. These days, everyone can complaint anytime on social media. It distracts themselves from the loneliness. Even if you were alone, you become less sensitive to feel lonely because of less mental loneliness. Actually you must feel it much enough to increase The more the number of people who are addicted to the Internet increase, the more you must feel it actually. Where does this title 'Happy End' come from? It's an obvious irony. I don't think that they would come up to be happy end after that because of the doubting stare of Isabelle Huppert in the last scene. So, I wondered if it ridicules so 'HAPPY END' which everyone supposes. Also, I felt Haneke stuck his tongue out by depicting the future of the previous work 'Amour.' Maybe he denied it was the pure happy end. I feel like a bit fun to image that Haneke looked at many videos by young youtubers for this movie. Or he might check them out always maybe?

There's a growing trend towards vague ('different') overblown, Award orientated movies. This addition to the Michael Haneke stable, examines the lives of a business woman's family, her Dr Brother and his dangerously disturbed 13 yr old daughter. It's more likely to please audiences who congratulate themselves on being able to 'appreciate' items that try so hard at being 'arty', they simply end up being unpopular with mainstream audiences. Being 'different' requires more than simplistic, overlong, single camera takes - that have said all they have to say within the first 40 seconds but, go on for many minutes to make sure you got the 'message'.

Happy End has an existentialist oriented script that most likely involved a scant amount of pages but even so, outstays its welcome by up to half an hour. Good performances (as these certainly are) are not enough to save this somewhat laboured expose' of the self absorbed business folk it examines - especially when the director's camera also endlessly tracks actors as they walk from one distant place to the next and back again - simply padding out vast spaces of lose scripting.

This could be called imitation Bergman without the well crafted, intense, emotional involvements that drew the viewer into his style of intimate personal examinations. Now days, he's been given over to a new wave of movie makers who have discovered they can cheaply make movies by using fewer cameras and virtually eliminating the 'vital' editing process by up to 85%.

The viewer can also partly play this game - by using the modern viewing devises to save themselves wasted time by playing back half the padded content in 2 x speed... losing little or no story in the process. In this particular case it could be that Mr Haneke may have come to his retirement years - even though he obviously still enjoys working. For dedicated Haneke fans only.

I've been getting into Michael Haneke movies lately. Code Unknown, Cache, Amour and now this. They're all excellent. Haneke seems to be a genre unto his own. Call it Haneke Intrigue.

Isabelle Huppert, with 137 acting credits, is gifted. In English or French she is a natural, it's like she is not acting, she is just whatever the role she is playing which I find uncanny. In this film she is billed as the lead, but I don't think she is the lead. She is the glue that holds it together, it is an ensemble cast that leads. JeanLouis Trintigant plays the family super-rich patriarch coming out with dementia is wonderful. He and his cutesy (wish I had a girlfriend like her when I was 12) grandaughter Eve share a penchant for suicidal tendencies. Eve is played by Fantine Harduin, a somewhat troubled youth, pulls off a crying scene in the car, I don't know how she does it, the pouting, tightening face muscles, Niagara Falls tears and sobbing kind of blew my mind.

For me those are some of the high points. Like most French film the story unwinds slowly, contemplatively and with care. It's not about what happens as much as how it happens and why it happens. Substance over form I call it. No real plot to it. Just life. People think, they feel, they emote, they deal with it, sometimes its productive and sometimes it just is. Thanks Ms. Huppert for keeping it all together.

I found it difficult to sort out all the connections between the disconnected sections of the film. Some scenes felt just plain unncecssarily obscene and I am not a prude. And the long stretches of each scene with nothing happening... deadly. The camera perspectives were entertaining and intriguing at first but then ceased to interest me. I stopped watching after an hour of this...