She’s Come Undone: Mack Concocts an Empathetic Chaos
It’s clear from the opening moments of Jan-Eric Mack’s narrative debut A Happy Family the title is meant ironically, which directly recalls Tolstoy’s iconic opening line in Anna Karenina regarding how each unhappy family has its own unique brand of unhappiness to navigate. An almost impossibly burdened single mother hurtling towards a breaking point settles into tense identity thriller mode befitting a psychological thriller. While waiting for the inevitable other shoe to drop, lead Anna Schinz crafts a painful character study as a woman run ragged by a constant state of survival mode, exhausted by a system designed to take rather than assist.
A stilted breakfast table scenario in Zurich unfolds as Niki (Schinz) attempts to feed her nine-year-old daughter Leonie (Annalisa Ferriani) and younger brother Jimmy (Lir Kunkel). A first guess would suggest they’re frightened captives, which makes sense as the camera pans to reveal they’re being observed by a social worker. The episode is a failure for Niki, who seems to only have hard bread and cereal without milk to offer the children, who, of course, seem to be struggling at school. Niki, whose fried blonde hair and suspiciously grown out roots suggests substance abuse issues, is on a hamster wheel to pay off a debt of seventy thousand francs. By day she works in a laundry press and on the weekend she has an overnight gig working the cloakroom at a nightclub, both venues defined by overwhelming sensory soundscapes. Add to this her taking an evening course to earn a degree in business services.
On the weekends, Niki must lock her children in the apartment while she’s away, which nearly leads to tragedy when they inadvertently cause a kitchen fire trying to feed themselves. The kids, already on the verge of being taken from her, are snatched away, their location undisclosed until Niki can prove how well she can cooperate with Child Protection Services. Seeing how miserable she is, her coworker at the nightclub helps her break into the CPS offices to locate her children, discovering the address of foster parents in Raron, a rural municipality in Switzerland. Out of desperation, Niki purposefully injures herself to get sick time from the laundry press and heads to Raron, changing her identity so she can get a position as janitorial staff at their new school and observe them from afar. But a chance encounter with their foster mother Sabine (Julia Jentsch) finds Niki’s tenuous plans spinning out of control.
It’s difficult to contend with a character like Niki, who seems as if she’s far surpassed the ability to make sound decisions, mired as she is with various issues. But Schinz brings a kind of wild determination which transcends the cramped apartment and Niki’s signature faded bubble-gum pink coat. Composer Thomas Kuralti guides us along with edgy expectations, his score sometimes hurtling into a manic escapism, best exemplified at an outdoor birthday party for Jimmy. DP Yunus Roy Imer, who did exemplary work on Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter’s Space Dogs (2019), matches this momentum with a slow-motion dance moment both beautiful and troubling, capturing a fleeting joy in a world about to change drastically for its main characters. Likewise a transfixing moment where Niki plunges off the deep end speeding toward Raron, a woman who is visually personified as someone with nothing left to lose, recalling Imer’s work on previous films showcasing unhinged characters, such as Helena Zengel in System Crasher (2019) or Saoirse Ronan in The Outrun (2024).
While there are elements of the questionable actions (or, rather, inactions) of CPS in Switzerland, A Happy Family is nowhere near the button pushing prowess of something like Cristian Mungiu’s recent Fjord (2026), Mack’s film is definitely an interesting character portrait for Schinz to wade around in, whose rendition of Niki resembles Sandra Huller on a gateway drug to becoming Amanda Plummer. The upended narrative tones, speckled with moments of painfully empathetic moments, manages to feel like a blend of Ken Loach’s Ladybird Ladybird (1994)—-which of course eerily references the fire of the children’s rhyme—-and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992). If every unhappy family is unhappy in their own way, this one is jaggedly unique.
Reviewed on July 5th at the 2026 Karlovy Vary Int. Film Festival (60th edition) – Crystal Globe Competition. 121 Mins.
★★★/☆☆☆☆☆
