PRESENTED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE EMBASSY OF AUSTRIA

In his latest film, Oscar-winning Austrian director Michael Haneke (Amour, Funny Games) tells the story of three generations of the Laurent family, a high-class household who go about their self-obsessed existence in northern France, oblivious to the human misery unfolding in migrant camps in the nearby port town of Calais.

There’s Anne (Huppert), who has recently taken over the family’s lucrative construction business from her ageing father (Trintignant), and has recently gotten engaged to a British lawyer (Jones). Her deadbeat son has put their company at risk through a negligence lawsuit, while her brother (Kassovitz) and his computer-savvy teenage daughter from his last marriage aren’t faring so well either.

Like much of Haneke’s oeuvre, Happy End features an outstanding, mostly French-speaking ensemble cast; but this film belongs to Trintignant as the ailing patriarch. He is both steely and vulnerable in a role which permits him almost no physical movement.

Happy End is a dark masterwork of pure sociopathy designed by a master filmmaker to both entertain and provoke – rightfully Austria’s submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 2018.