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EVERYTHING WENT FINE
Director: François Ozon Cast: Sophie Marceau, André Dussollier, Géraldine Pailhas, Charlotte Rampling, Éric Caravaca, Hanna Schygulla MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:53 Release Date: 4/14/23 (limited); 4/21/23 (wider) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 20, 2023 Writer/director François Ozon's Everything Went Fine takes on the subject of assisted suicide, not to make a case in favor or against the practice, but to but give us some sense of what it's like for a family to come to and deal with that decision once it has been made. The story comes from a memoir by the author Emmanuèle Bernheim, and the filmmaker maintains a feeling that alternates between emotional detachment and vulnerability. It's accurate and authentic in that regard, to be sure. The story primarily follows Emmanuèle (Sophie Marceau), whose life becomes dedicated to tending to, caring for, and, yes, putting up with her father André (André Dussollier) after he suffers a stroke at the very start of the film. Sophie and her sister Pascale (Géraldine Pailhas) meet at the hospital to visit him, and the rest of the narrative revolves around visits to various hospital rooms and clinics, discussions about what kind of care André needs, and, once the father decides that he wants to die, arguments about whether or not that's a viable or even the correct option. This isn't some message movie or a dramatized debate on the topic. There's a specificity to this situation and these relationships that isolates the story from matters of politics and morality. For one thing, it's clear that André is not a figure of some pity or much sympathy, despite his current health troubles or the personal struggles, as a gay man trying to conceal his sexuality by way of a marriage to Claude (Charlotte Rampling) and having two children, he has experienced in the past. André is stubborn, makes an unhealthy habit of setting his two daughters against each other, and has a long history of demeaning Emmanuèle, especially when she was an impressionable and sensitive child. "He was a terrible father," Emmanuèle admits at one point, "but I love him." As we learn about their thorny relationship through flashbacks and watch as the two sisters grudgingly go along with their father's desire to die, the whole film also confronts Emmanuèle wrestling with those conflicting emotions. There was a time when she would have wished André dead, which is both an understandable and slightly shameful thing to feel. It's little wonder, then, that Emmanuèle approaches this process—of finding a clinic in Switzerland that would assist in André's suicide—as a routine matter of meetings and scheduling. How much of that is the lingering resentment she feels for this man, the belief that he won't go through with the plan, and the distance with which we generally approach matters of death? When it comes to André, it's apparent his sincere in this plan (He's only happy when talking about it), but in some way, is this also the ultimate punishment he's inflicting upon his daughters? Everything Went Fine offers no answers. Such questions are unsettling enough, until the film's final answer cuts through everything to a moment of simple, clinical, and surprising pathos. Copyright © 2023 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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