Michael Haneke, France/Germany/Austria, 2017, 107 min
From Michael Haneke, Oscar-winning director of CACHÉ, THE WHITE RIBBON, and AMOUR, comes a multi-generational drama starring Isabelle Huppert and Mathieu Kassovitz as chilly siblings, with Jean-Louis Trintignant as the paterfamilias of their upper class family of French developers. Situated in a grand home in Calais (site of the “Jungle,” a notorious refugee camp), Trintignant and Huppert revisit their edgy father-daughter relationship from AMOUR. While HAPPY END is not a sequel to that film, it does continue the director’s focus upon (in Manohla Dargis’s words in The New York Times): “…the rot and wretchedness of the bourgeoisie… [with an] emphasis again on surveillance culture, class pathology and anomie…” Haneke masterfully withholds information -- then powerfully shocks you with one profound revelation after another, much of it tinged with his signature nihilistic black humor.