![]() At first, I hoped quoting some of the lines for this review would help myself and readers understand the film. While watching this, I took to writing down the subtitles’ English translations of the voiceover narration, spoken in dry French by Rebecca Marder and written by Panh and his frequent screenwriting collaborator Christophe Bataille. Screenwriters: Rithy Panh, Christophe Bataille, Agnes Senemaud Observer Reviews are regular assessments of new and noteworthy cinema.Venue: Berlin Film Festival (Competition) It’s life-affirming and teaches us something valid about life’s unexpected but unavoidable challenges, eschewing all temptations to give in to sentimentality. I hope this is not the case with Everything Went Fine. Movies about growing old gracefully and dying heroically are often avoided like a virus by audiences seeking happier and more entertaining feel-good subjects. Most of all, the multi-faceted centerpiece performance by Andre Dussallier as the father is deeply devastating. Ozon’s meticulous screenplay and compassionate direction leave no stone unturned in telling this true story, based on the book Emmanuele Bernheim published following her father’s death, and enhanced immensely by a perfect cast that includes the ravishing Sophie Marceau as Emmanuele, Geraldine Pailhas as Pascale, veteran actress Hanna Schygulla as the woman who runs the actual Swiss organization that provides solutions to terminally ill patients. From the personality snafus to the carefully detailed regimen of antidepressants, statins and blood thinners that keep the old man alive while his family struggles to get him to a clinic in Switzerland that will legally terminate his pain and give him freedom, to the aftermath of the phone call confirming that “Everything went fine,” Mr. It all sounds relentlessly sad and hopeless, but a mesmerizing fascination ensues as the film leads the viewer through myriad complications in the lives of a diverse group of characters as Emmanuele investigates the legal consequences of assisted suicide. ![]() This film is further proof that she can do no wrong in any role, regardless of size. A small but galvanizing bonus to Everything Went Fine is the cameo performance by Charlotte Rampling as the mother. Worse still, there’s no help from Emmanuele and Pascale’s mother Claude, a notable sculptress separated from their father for years and suffering from depression and the last stages of Parkinson’s disease. These are mature people willing to go the extra existence to enrich the final days in their father’s life, but he’s a man of many conflicting personality shifts-irascible, temperamental, demanding, challenging-and he’s also gay, with a violent, dangerous lover reluctant to say goodbye, even if it means reporting everyone to the police to face arrest and a prison sentence. Bernheim touches his two already worried daughters’ raw nerves even more when he confides in them his desire for them to help him die with dignity.Įmmanuele is a novelist, her husband Serge is a film historian planning a retrospective on Luis Bunuel Pascale is a musician with two children. The film peels away layers of guarded emotion in the internecine relationships between their father and various relatives and friends, but Mr. The Bernheims are a sophisticated lot-highly educated, professionally accomplished, and culturally advanced-so it is not surprising that they handle misfortune with reserves of calm and control, but in a crisis they can still feel pain and sorrow intensely. When their elderly father Andre suffers a crippling stroke and all of its dire consequences, they rush to face responsibility, administer care, and prepare for his inevitable death. Starring: Sophie Marceau, André Dussollier, Géraldine Pailhas, Charlotte Rampling, Hanna Schygulla, Éric Caravaca, Grégory GadeboisĮmmanuele and Pascale Bernheim are loving and devoted sisters in a prominent and cultured Jewish family in Paris.
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