Butler's Cinema Scene

Alicia Vikander, Eva Green

“EUPHORIA” My rating: B (Opens June  at)

104 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“When a man knows he’s to be hanged in a fortnight,” observed Samuel Johnson, “it focuses his mind most wonderfully.”

How the siblings  at the center of “Euphoria” focus their minds (or refuse to do so) on imminent mortality is very much the concern of writer/director Lisa Langseth, who initially poses one mystery, only to have it supplanted by a much deeper one.

Ines (Alicia Vikander) returns to Europe at the request of her sister Emilie (Eva Green).  She hasn’t been home for more than a decade, during which time she built a career as an artist in NYC.  Never much of a family person, Ines has delayed this reunion; she’s only doing it now as a way of fleeing the bad reviews of her latest exhibition.

She finds her sister in a curiously spendthrift  frame of mind. Emilie has booked them into a posh hotel and treats her sis to a very expensive dinner. The money, Emilie claims, comes from the sale of her home.

But the big surprise is a trip to Switzerland where Emilie has booked the pair into a posh resort in the middle of a lush forest.

Only when they arrive at their destination does Ines realize what’s going on.  Unbeknownst to her, Emilie has been fighting cancer for years; this is less a vacation than a brief meditative retreat to be followed by a staff-assisted suicide.

Charlotte Rampling

Were “Euphoria” a thriller, we might find Emilie changing her mind, only to be told by the management that backing out is not an option.  At that point the sisters would have to make a desperate and dangerous escape.

But the film isn’t a thriller. The resort staff are gentle and understanding; clients most certainly can decide to go on living (after all, they’ve already paid for the end-of-life package).

The real conflict here is between the weary Emilie, who wants her suffering to end, and the self-centered Ines, who  sees her sister’s surrender as typical of a person who’s always been a patsy.

The bulk of “Euphoria” finds the two women unpacking decades of emotional baggage.  When their father abandoned the family, Ines got bitter and took off for life abroad. Emilie was left to care for their emotionally ruined mother.

Ines sees herself as a hard-bitten realist and survivor; she regards Emilie as bogged down in self-indulgent emotion.

Their dialogue is interrupted from time to time by Marina (Charlotte Rampling), a staff member assigned to see to Emilie’s needs (Ines bristles at Marina’s woo-woo ministrations) and by another patient/client, Daren (Charles Dance), who uses his fortune to give himself a going-away rock concert.

Langseth has provided her leading ladies with some terrific dialogue. In particular there’s a great exchange in which the not-very-worldly Emilie urges Ines to talk about her most interesting sexual experience (a three-way, as it happens); the scene is perfectly played to reveal the pair’s shared embarrassment and delight.

Later Emilie will have a final romantic moment with a paraplegic (Mark Stanley), a former athlete now confined to a wheelchair and eager to end it all. It’s quietly heartbreaking.

| Robert W. Butler