In adeptly translating the inert feeling of grief into a gradually accelerating narrative pace that sees time frustratingly slip away, David Lowery transforms the material world into a quiet limbo of poignant self-reflection, playing out a meditation on loss, history, and existence from the perspective of A Ghost Story’s titular spectre.
Although Happy End never quite escapes from under the cloud of Michael Haneke’s previous films, its derivative narrative threads do eventually congeal into a greater point around the suppressed misery and hidden depravity of the bourgeoisie, chillingly hidden behind stoic expressions that only isolate them further from the rest of the world.
Lynne Ramsay is far more interested in creating an impressionistic sense of a lonely, disorientated mind out of hypnotic montages than she is in plot in You Were Never Really Here, building ambient rhythms that draw us into the fragmented nightmares of a violent man tasked with rescuing young girls from traffickers.
