The French filmmaker François Ozon is turning more and more often towards committed cinema. Without aiming for the same realistic vein as his masterful Thanks to God in 2019, Everything went fine addresses the thorny subject of medical assistance in dying. It stages the autobiographical story of Emmanuele Bernheim, who had helped her sick father to take the plunge, as he insisted on getting it over with. In France, euthanasia is prohibited, but not in Switzerland. Hence many trips without return.
The filmmaker of Sitcom and of Vase had often broached the lurking death, notably in under the sand and Remaining time. Here, without taking a direct stand for assisted suicide, he shows the way to freedom of choice and gives the viewer food for thought. The humor offers a new tone to Bernheim’s memories, here less dark than in writing, without reducing the emotional charge.
The film depicts André (André Dussollier, newcomer to the Ozon family), a wealthy music-loving collector, cultured, cantankerous, perverse and manipulative, homosexual married to a woman, hard to live with, at the hospital. Cerebral vascular accidents suddenly condemn him to a semi-paralyzed life too heavy for him. Alain Resnais’ favorite actor embodies this colorful character with ferocity and jubilation, aged, made up, ironic, ultimately funny with his twisted mouth, his variable-geometry aphasia. This role of pure composition contrasts with the more realistic interpretations of those that accompany it. Spectacular, Dussollier overshadows his playing partners.
At his side, his daughters: Emmanuèle, the favorite (Sophie Marceau, first collaboration with Ozon), and Pascale (Géraldine Pailhas, all finesse and melancholic withdrawal). Their father had always put them in rivalry and he is working hard. Indeed mirror, Sophie Marceau is followed with fascination by the camera, often with the shoulder, which tracks each nuance of its game, more than that of Pailhas.
The star of The party and of My nights are more beautiful than your days offers here a sincere and honest proposal, failing to upset as a strong and troubled woman who retreats, advances, loses her footing. Her character will make contact with the director of a Swiss association, played with superior humanity by Hanna Schygulla. As for Charlotte Rampling, muse of François Ozon, in a secondary as well as essential role, here she is, the hero’s wife: a brittle figure of a depressive artist brilliantly camped on the razor’s edge.
To classical music tunes, Ozon juggles genres here, wielding drama and comedy with a side of suspense in this race to death filled with pitfalls, presented by always bouncing chapters. Nevertheless Everything went well remains quite classic in its form and could have had more fun. The levels of interpretation sometimes collide and the tones are not always well married. This does not deprive the film of its social significance and its sensitivity, while preventing it from achieving full cinematographic harmony.