Everything Went Fine shines with the artistic beauty of French cinema at its best as we watch two sisters face the ultimate decision: to love, honour, and support their father’s choice, or turn away in fear. Everything Went Fine is showing in cinemas nationwide from June 17th.
From the moment we are born, life offers few certainties, but death is one we all share. For many of us, our first experience of death comes through the loss of a pet or the devastating departure of a loving grandparent. But despite the inevitability of death, we are often reluctant to talk about it openly or define our own wishes the older we get. So, let me ask a direct question: How do you want to die?
It’s a tricky question, and one we often would rather ignore. For most of us, as we age, we take comfort in the thought that we will fall asleep at a ripe old age and never wake up, drifting peacefully into the unknown. But the reality is that this is a pipe dream for most of us, with our final days marred by illness, fragility or hospital care. Therefore, do we not have a duty to voice what we want for ourselves and others? And should we be more open about our wishes with the loved ones we may leave behind?
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These questions surround François Ozon‘s Everything Went Fine, as Ozon explores the final months of one man’s life and the decisions he takes as his body fails. Ozon’s film is wrapped in challenging questions about individual wishes and state control as he explores assisted dying through a father and daughter’s eyes. But morbidity is nowhere to be found in Ozon’s adaptation of Emmanuèle Bernheim’s memoir Tout s’est bien passé (Everything Went Fine). Instead, we get a beautiful exploration of death, love, and individual choice that ebbs and flows with emotion, drama, and humour while asking us one simple question: What would you do?
Emmanuèlle (Sophie Marceau) has just received an urgent phone call, the type of call we all dread as our parents age; her father, André (André Dussollier), has had a stroke. As Emmanuèlle and her sister, Pascale (Géraldine Pailhas), arrive at their father’s bedside, they are told the prognosis is not dire. Still, he may never talk again, his recovery likely to be long and arduous.
As time passes, André slowly begins to recover, regaining his speech and some movement. But when he tells Emmanuèle that he wishes to end his life and wants her assistance in making this a reality, Emmanuèle’s world is thrown into uncertainty. Does she honour her father’s wishes and help him, despite laws against assisted dying in France, or does she try to persuade him otherwise?
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Through flashbacks, Ozon offers us a portrait of Emmanuèle’s tricky relationship with her father and her mother, Claude (Charlotte Rampling), who has little affection for her husband and is struggling with Parkinson’s. Here, we are offered a complex portrait of family life, showing how André’s actions were often self-centred, with little thought for his family. For example, his sexuality was kept hidden from those he loved before finding expression in later life, while his stubbornness and emotional games often drove a wedge between his daughters. Emmanuèle’s conflicted emotions and patience are bound in a love that hasn’t been easy to maintain as she attempts to understand the man behind the aloof father and the confrontational husband.
The story offers no grandiose political statements or Hollywood-inspired emotional hooks. Instead, we get a series of poignant moments, from André’s half-eaten sandwich held as a souvenir by Emmanuèle to beautiful scenes reflecting the love between two sisters and a family meal where André gushes over the handsome waiter.
Meanwhile, Ozon’s connection to Bernheim (a longtime collaborator until her death in 2017) adds emotional depth, while performances from Marceau, Dussollier, and Pailhas are simply divine. Everything Went Fine shines with the artistic beauty of French cinema at its best as we watch two sisters face the ultimate decision: to love, honour, and support their father’s choice, or turn away in fear.
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