Everything Went Fine
Everything Went Fine sees the French director back in his more severe, social issues mode as he tells the story of a daughter who is wrestling with her father’s request that she euthanise him
François Ozon is best known as a master of the erotic thriller thanks to the likes of Swimming Pool and In the House – films which, while taut and compulsive, are crucially fun. Less celebrated is the director’s inclination to make social issue pictures in which viewers are forced to forensically engage with taboo subjects over a generous running time. Everything Went Fine falls into this second category and is as erotic and thrilling as a hospital sponge bath.
It sees a daughter wrestle with her father’s request that she euthanise him following a severe stroke from which recovery is unlikely. This drama takes place against the backdrop of revelations about the man’s past, her depressed mother’s Parkinson’s disease and various family tensions. It’s hard to imagine anyone enjoying a film so firmly fixated on the banal misery of existence, but Ozon’s approach is sufficiently cinematic that at least our attention does not wander.
Flashback scenes show our protagonist interacting with her father when she was a young girl, and parallel the dynamics between the pair in the present, even as we find one in an incapacitated state. Meanwhile, a disruptive figure whose relationship with the family is initially unclear, threatens to throw an already precarious situation off balance.
Ozon has always been one to pepper his realism with a certain amount of flair, but here he ultimately goes too far with salacious plot points. Rather than allow us to reflect on the ethics of euthanasia or the relative value of life, a film that threatens to deliver a hefty emotional punch turns out to be more interested in frustrated family dynamics and administrative headaches.
Released 17 Jun by Curzon; certificate 15