Following Caché and the 2013 Oscar-winning Amour, the solipsistic hypocrisy of a privileged French dynasty is fertile ground for writer & director Michael Haneke. His preoccupations with dysfunctional relationships, surveillance and death – both a fear of and a longing for – all feature in this horrific comic drama. In a magnificent mansion in Calais, Isabelle Huppert and Jean-Louis Trintignant respectively play the scheming matriarch and demented, suicidal patriarch of an haute-bourgeois family. Also of their party are a feckless son (Rogowski) being groomed to run the family firm he risks ruining through negligence, a shady English insurance broker (Toby Jones) and the thirteen-year-old malevolent Eve (Fantine Harduin), who forms a strange bond with her grandfather. Outside in the city refugees wait their chance to get through the tunnel. An eerie and gripping parable for our anxious times.
Director:
Michael Haneke
Starring:
Mathieu Kassovitz,
Isabelle Huppert,
Jean-Louis Trintignant
Duration: 165 min
