Happy End is a 2017 film by Michael Haneke starring Isabelle Huppert and Jean-Louis Trintignant.
Tropes:
- Armor-Piercing Response: When Thomas asks his daughter at the beach why she thinks he would leave Anaïs, she replies he also left his first wife. He doesn't have an answer to that.
- Big, Screwed-Up Family: Once again, Haneke takes many stabs at the bourgeoisie.
- Black Comedy: Like most of Haneke's previous films, Happy End has a dark, pessimistic tone, but some parts have a comedic element to them. For example, the ending has Eve helps her grandfather commit suicide before pulling out her phone to record his death.
- Driven to Suicide: Both Georges Laurent and his granddaughter Eve are. Both fail.
- Happy Ending: Played with, of course. The ending is formally happy but in quite a twisted way.
- Mythology Gag: To some of Haneke's filmography.
- The Seventh Continent: Eve tries to commit suicide by overdosing on medical pills.
- Benny's Video: A camera films a child murdering another person.
- 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance: Georges asks his barber to help him buy a pistol.
- Code Unknown: Eve recounts to her father a story about a classmate who stole a jacket from another classmate.
- The Piano Teacher: Thomas Laurent is romancing a musician, and they both send each other messages reminiscent of the letter written by Erika.
- Caché: The scene in which Thomas picks up his daughter from school is filmed exactly like the scene of Georges picking up his son from school. There is also a subplot concerning adultery, but this time, it is explicit rather than ambiguous. And, of course, the names of the main protagonists of both films are identical.
- Amour: Jean-Louis Trintignant and Isabelle Huppert play father and daughter once again. In addition, Trintigant's character is once again an old man who delivered a Mercy Kill to his paralyzed, bedridden wife by suffocating her.
