After its debut at the Cannes Film Festival back in May, the very first trailer for Michael Haneke’s next film Happy End has debuted online. The film stars Isabelle Huppert, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Mathieu Kassovitz, Fantine Harduin, Franz Rogowski, Laura Verlinden and Toby Jones, and will open in U.K. cinemas on 1st December, before arriving Stateside just before Christmas on December 22nd. You can watch the first Happy End trailer below.
Happy End trailer: Michael Haneke’s new film gets its first promo.
“All around us, the world, and we, in its midst, blind”.
The Happy End trailer we have for you is a domestic one, so it is in French, but does give you an idea of what to expect in the forthcoming comedy drama which seemed to wow critics at the south of France film festival a couple of months ago.
The film revolves around the Laurent family who run a large construction business, and their dark secrets lurking beneath the surface.
Related: The Hollywood News at Cannes 2017
The film garnered some great reviews in Cannes with The Guardian‘s Peter Bradshaw calling it ‘stark, brilliant and unforgiving as a halogen light.’
He added: “It is not a new direction for this film-maker, admittedly, but an existing direction pursued with the same dazzling inspiration as ever. It is also as gripping as a satanically inspired soap opera, a dynasty of lost souls.”
David Sexton of the Evening Standard said: “Happy End is so distinctively a Haneke film, it sometimes seems almost self-parodic — but then originality has only its own self to copy. Throughout, nothing is explained, everything has to be watched with dreadful attention.”
There were reviews that were less favourable, but still positive. Joseph Walsh at The Skinny said: “[Haneke’s] shtick has not exactly gone stale, but the film doesn’t gel thematically. There are still things to recommend in Happy End, particularly the blackly comic tone that should trigger a few guilty laughs, but perhaps it is time for this master director to explore some new territory.”
Thanks to the film’s French production company Les Films du Losange for this first Happy End trailer. Watch it below.
