When one thinks of Christmas, the films of Michael Haneke don't really come to mind (unless your family is a bunch of sociopaths, at which point have at it). But the austere Austrian master of morbid suspense is at it again, and Sony Pictures Classics is bringing his latest - the bougie dissection of family, Happy End - home just in time for holiday viewing.
Take a look at the first US trailer for the film, which even manages to somehow include break-dancing:
There's an irony to the the title of Haneke's newest picture, of course, as almost all of his movies end anything but happily. From the death bed dissolution of a marriage, to the death of every character via murder and/or suicide, to the inception of Nazism itself, Haneke has never been known for sending audiences out of auditoriums on a high note.
Starring Isabelle Huppert, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Mathieu Kassovitz, Fantine Harduin, Franz Rogowski, Laura Verlinden, and Toby Jones, Happy End's depiction of the life of a bourgeois European family won fairly solid reviews out of Cannes. So, hopefully your mom and dad are ready for a trip to the art house following presents and ham when the movie arrives December 22 (a/k/a Christmas Weekend).