Happy End

A wealthy construction family in Calais. While the migrant crisis runs at the edge of the city, the family is busy with its own collapse: the old father wants to die, his daughter is trying to keep the company standing, and the granddaughter secretly films everything on her phone. Michael Haneke directed, reuniting Isabelle Huppert and Jean-Louis Trintignant after Amour in 2012. It opens on smartphone screens; the footage Eve Laurent shoots in secret sets the film's point of view from the start. It sometimes leaps forward abruptly and you register the things it passed over afterwards, with a lurch. The migrant crisis stays in the background, and Haneke means it that way: in this family's world other people's suffering only appears at the edge of the frame. It competed for the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2017. It was Austria's Oscar submission and was not nominated at the 90th ceremony. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 70 percent, with critics writing that it still succeeds in forcing audiences to confront the dark side of human nature while noting that Haneke is retreading old ground. Who it is for: viewers who know Haneke and like cold family portraits. Who it is not for: anyone expecting something new from him. The film reuses the devices of his earlier work, which is what the reviews agree on.