The latest from Michael Haneke (The White Ribbon/Amour) is an uneven account of a family in crisis in France. Grandpa wants to kill himself, mom's son is a drunk waste, her brother's ex was hospitalized from an accidental poisoning prompting his estranged daughter to come live w/him as she recuperates which makes his new wife a little edgy & so on & so on. Episodic in the extreme, we never get a sense of a through line story-wise, since Haneke is more interested in juxtaposing our encroaching fascination w/technology (there's a series of bizarre sexualized IM's sent from a laptop screen but we never see who the typist is) rather than genuine human interaction between family members. Starring French greats Jean-Louis Trintignant & Isabelle Huppert, the ensemble cast acquit themselves admirably but the scattershot plotting betrays their good intentions at every turn.
