The title is ironic. The end is not happy for Michael Haneke’s bourgeois French family, whose hamper of festering secrets the Austrian director unpacks with glee. His twelfth feature, which is vying for an unprecedented third Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, features an acting masterclass from French veteran Jean-Louis Trintignant as Georges Laurent, a dotty patriarch who has lost the will to live.
For added piquancy Haneke has set his latest tale in the northern French city of Calais where po-faced immigrants stroll silently about the streets – their lack of menace no doubt intended as a counterpoint to the dastardly doings of the Laurent family. The significant youngest member of this clan, a 13-year-old girl (played with stunning composure by Fantine Harduin), is the first to reveal herself lacking in moral scruples.
After her mother is rushed to hospital she moves into the Laurent family’s stately abode where her divorced father, a deceptively meek doctor (played by Mathieu Kassovitz), is living with his new wife and their infant baby.
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