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Everything Went Fine

Death’s intimate challenge
by
ABR Arts 16 May 2022

Everything Went Fine

Death’s intimate challenge
by
ABR Arts 16 May 2022
Sophie Marceau, Géraldine Pailhas, and André Dussollier in <em>Everything Went Fine</em> (photo credit: Carole Bethuel)
Sophie Marceau, Géraldine Pailhas, and André Dussollier in Everything Went Fine (photo credit: Carole Bethuel)

When a father asks his daughter to help end his life, is it out of love or perversity? In Everything Went Fine, it is both. François Ozon’s films typically belong to the French tradition of intimiste cinema, melodramas centred on the bourgeois patriarchal family. Everything Went Fine (Tout c’est bien passé, 2021), Ozon’s twentieth feature film, is no exception. This preference for melodrama means that his films predominantly focus on familial relations and French social mores. This does not mean they ignore broader social or political issues. While not overtly political, Ozon has made issues-based films such as Time to Leave (AIDS), Young & Beautiful (teenage prostitution), and By the Grace of God (child abuse in the Catholic church) – though they tend to focus more on personal rather than social implications. Everything Went Fine takes its place among these more sober films, rather than films like the more exuberant Summer of 85 and 8 Women, with their camp aesthetic and generic play.

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