For great ills, great remedies. Faced with climate change which continues to get worse, the nations of the world are opting, in a future that we suspect is near, for a radical solution: reducing their population by 20%, thanks to the legalization of euthanasia. In the country where the action of “Humane” takes place (probably the United States), any voluntary person, who “enlists”, proclaims the official discourse and therefore voluntarily ends his existence, has the right to a a smooth departure to the afterlife, while his family hits a big jackpot. Faced with the influx of requests, the government has even subcontracted this activity to private companies, which come to people's homes.
Charles York, a septuagenarian, famous TV presenter who has tried all his life to warn about environmental damage, and his partner, Dawn, enroll in this program out of conviction. And they summon Charles' four children to inform them of their decision. The start of a day that will turn into a game of massacre…
The happy land of family score settling
Caitlin Cronenberg, daughter of Canadian director David Cronenberg, delivers her first feature film here at age 40 after a busy career as a photographer. Damn, she can't lie, and she's doing quite well with this dystopian thriller, released in theaters across the Atlantic almost a year ago and then passed through the Shudder box, a platform specializing in horror, before to arrive here, since Friday, on Paramount +.
In “Humane” (“humane”, in French), everyone takes their position, starting with the States which, instead of fighting effectively to save the planet, resort to the extreme solution of population decline in order to to change anything further, via the Athens agreements, a clear reference to the vain Rio or Paris agreements which were signed in the real world. The opportunity for a little sarcastic wink when a news banner announces on television that Russia has fulfilled its objective three months in advance…
But individuals are not spared either. Starting with the four York children, who will happily kill each other for a reason that we will not reveal, but with a certain enthusiasm. All under the fierce and disillusioned eye of a fifth individual, Bob, employee of the euthanasia company, undoubtedly the best portrayed character in the film.
Dark, funny, sometimes violent, and jubilantly amoral, “Humane” suffers from an ending that is a little too telephonic. But it turns out to be a perfect complement to the very aesthetic “The Room Next Door”, by Almodóvar, which also deals with euthanasia, but with significantly less blood and second degree.
Canadian-Belgian thriller by Caitlin Cronenberg, with Peter Gallagher, Sebastian Chacon, Emily Hampshire, Alanna Bale… 1h30. On Paramount+.
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