The vacation begins with Anna, George and their son Georgie on their way to their summer home. The neighbours, Fred and Eva, are already there. They make a date to play golf the next morning. It’s a perfect day.
Anna begins to make dinner, while her husband and son are busy with the newly renovated sailboat. Suddenly, Anna finds herself face to face with a polite young man, the neighbours’ guest Peter, who has come to ask for some eggs because Eva has run out.
Anna is about to give Peter the eggs, but hesitates. How did he get onto their property? Peter explains that there’s a hole in the fence Fred showed it to him.
Things seem strange from the beginning. Soon, violence erupts. The thriller follows the rules of its genre, providing the deliverance that allows the audience to feel comfortable watching the film.
Michael Haneke began to explore his favorite subject, violence and the media, with the original 1997 film, Funny Games, and revisits it here with the same eye.
Haneke’s trilogy (The Seventh Continent - 1989; Benny’s Video - 1992; 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance - 1994), particularly Benny’s Video, exposes the consequences of the media’s portrayal of violence.
Funny Games subverts the genre to allow audiences to observe that violence, and making them complicit by forcing them to see their own role through a series of emotional and analytical episodes.
In the belief that explanation would be reassuring, Haneke deliberately refuses to provide any.
'I’m trying to find ways to show violence as it really is: it is not something that you can swallow. I want to show the reality of violence, the pain, the wounding of another human being.'
Funny Games is released 28th July