This is the end

Filmmaker Michael Haneke (The Piano Teacher, Hidden, Amour, etc.) is not in the business of making “happy” movies, and his new film, the ironically titled Happy End, is no exception to that rule. For all that, however, this grim-humored drama about three generations of a large, wealthy and thoroughly unhappy family offers up a good many rewards for audiences not scared off by the prospect of an incisive and often surprising two-hour parade through a diverse array of distinctly modern human failings.

Elderly Georges Laurent (Jean-Louis Trintignant), the family patriarch, is in declining health, and his daughter Anne (Isabelle Huppert) has taken charge of the family construction business in Calais, France, and is trying to groom her adult son, the somewhat hapless Pierre (Franz Rogowski), for an executive future. Anne’s brother, Thomas (Mathieu Kassovitz), is a physician whose second marriage is in trouble.

There’s an upper middle class saga brewing in all that, but the real dramatic fire in Happy End turns up elsewhere and in somewhat unexpected quarters. Thomas’ ex-wife falls gravely ill (it’s soon evident that she’s been poisoned), as a result of which 13-year-old Eve (Fantine Harduin) must come to live with her oddly distracted father. For Eve, the move is a mixed blessing, at best, and her mother’s poisoning is soon followed by a tragicomic string of family calamities.

There’s a major cave-in at a company work site; grandfather Georges drives a company vehicle into a tree and ends up in a wheelchair; Pierre goes AWOL after the cave-in and tries to completely escape the family; the computer-savvy Eve discovers evidence of the romance-by-sexting that her father is having with a woman named Claire; grandfather Georges offers cash to homeless Africans if they’ll help him commit suicide; etc.

Suicidal wishes, fallacious declarations of love and a multigeneration deficit of empathy recur throughout Happy End. Those are time-honored elements of sadness in family sagas, and Haneke gives them a special contemporary sting by filtering them through the social media used by much of the family. Besides the quasi-pornographic love affair conducted by e-mail, there’s the oddly disturbing video footage of family members that Eve compiles on her smartphone. Pierre’s crazed and reckless display of breakdancing on a strobe-lit barroom stage seems part of that electronically amplified madness as well.

Haneke’s films are discomfiting. But, at least part of the time, the discomfort and unease are signs that he’s hitting very close to home. The performances he gets from the main players here, including the hauntingly grave Harduin, are examples of that, as are the brief but telling roles played by other luminaries.

Nathalie Richard, who does a cameo as a real estate agent, is a fresh breeze from a whole other world. Hassam Ghancy, as Georges’ valet, evokes another civilization and its history. Claire, Thomas’ online lover, is seen mostly through the erotic texts the two of them share. But world-class musician Hille Perl appears onscreen as Claire—once while she’s texting alone in bed and once at the finish of a frenetic solo performance on viola de gamba—and she comes across as a furious, solitary, homeless goddess. The only thing better than that in Happy End is Rogowski’s berserk dancing.