Plot summary
A well-to-do French family living in Calais deal with a series of setbacks and crises while paying little attention to the grim conditions in the refugee camps within a few miles of their home.
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Movie Reviews
The now wheelchair-bound industrialist “Georges” (Jean-Louis Tr...
Cross-generational self-destruction
A French drama; A story about a young girl sent to stay in Calais with her father's dysfunctional bourgeois family with their own problems. This is a stark, unforgiving, and intermittently absorbing satire about an upper middle-class family. Filmed like a puzzle, it is arguably maddening in its slow pace but also sharp in its meaning. Set in coastal Northern France it deals with themes such as family despair and dysfunction, self-destruction, inter-generational revenge and suppression of guilt. The interesting technological aspect to the story is that surveillance and video recording are devices for illustrating sordid desire and longing. As an aside, Michael Haneke has built a reputation for making films which confront his audience to make them feel uncomfortable and there is little let-up with this offering.







