Happy End

This, the most ironically titled of all Haneke films, is also one of his most intriguing; it is as cutting as Jean-Louis Trintignant's stare. On the one hand, we have an overview of iconic themes plied by the director of Golden Palm-winner Love or Funny Games, what with its intergenerational conflict, an awful bourgeois, dysfunctional family, and violence - the victims of which appear in the least expected moment, as well as old age, and the dictatorship of technology. On the other, it is a brutal indictment of Europe, delivered in a shocking though amusing manner. It's also an electrifying on-screen encounter among Haneke's stars; Isabelle Huppert plays the head of a wealthy family, while Jean-Louis Trintignant that of her father, who is planning to commit suicide. This bourgeois family from Calais (recall the town is emblematic of the refugee crisis) encounters a series of catastrophes within just a few days that leads them to a downfall. It is, the film implies, the same direction that the dysfunctional, uncompassionate and withering West is headed. In that case, what does the happy end imply here?