Happy End

"Don't believe the title of this Michael Haneke film."

Dec 22 2017 R 1h 47m
Drama

A well-to-do French family living in Calais deal with a series of setbacks and crises while paying little attention to the grim conditions in the refugee camps within a few miles of their home.

Plot

Gradually succumbing to dementia, George Laurent, the octogenarian patriarch of the Laurents, an affluent upper-bourgeois family, is uncomfortably sharing his palatial manor in Calais, the heart of the infamous migrant jungle, with his twice-married son, Thomas, and Anne, his workaholic daughter who has taken over the family construction business. Divorced and frigid, Anne has to handle the impact of a disastrous workplace accident caused by her disappointing son Pierre's negligence, while at the same time, the urgent hospitalisation of Thomas' ex-wife from a mysterious poisoning, leads his sulky 13-year-old daughter, Ève, to live with her father and his new wife, Anais. Undoubtedly, in this family, everyone has a skeleton in the closet, and as the fates of the Laurents enmesh with insistent and ignoble desires, a peculiar and disturbing alliance will form. But in the end, some secrets are bigger than others.

Written by

Michael Haneke

Directed by

Michael Haneke

Production Countries

Germany, France, Austria

Production Companies

X Filme Creative Pool, wega film vienna, Les Films du Losange, France 3 Cinéma, ARTE France Cinéma

Languages

Français, English

Awards

2 wins & 8 nominations

Scores
# of Votes
17,952
Average Rating
6.6 out of 10
Metascore
72
Popularity
NA