Farewell Party (The)

It doesn't matter what your views are on assisted suicide...the legal arguments are complex, punishing and - above all - objective.

In the eyes of the law, there can be no subjectivity...in the wrong hands, euthanasia has been, can be and will be exploited...remember: the genocide(s) in Germany began with the false platitudes of such a practice. Thousands of disabled people were murdered in the name of euthanasia...substantiated by two underlying and opposing arguments. Cost of living versus quality of life...the cost (in a war-mongering Germany) outweighed the quality...with an unimaginable, vivid and horrific result.

So, The Farewell Party has a particular poignancy...a Jewish retirement village, replete with Holocaust memories, build a death machine - to assist suicides...to avoid criminal convictions...to earn a little bit of money on the side.

Doesn't sound too much like a comedy - does it?!

Well...it is and it's not.

There are dichotomies that will divide and unite. Prescribing the death machine becomes a pragmatic, objective decision for those unrelated...that changes, understandably, when the prescription is for someone much closer...a wife, a husband.

This all-consuming soul-searching is puncuated with subplots and, dare we say, rib-tickling chuckles...with some delicious visual gags. The gay storyline is a smorgasbord of slapstick and denial...and, it delivers a message that resonates incongruously within the film: it's never too late!

Performance-wise, all credible - infused with the right amount of sentimentality and geriatric childishness. This playfulness does not entirely belie the gravity of the situation.

Like dementia, it cannot be controlled with the flick of a switch - like life, it should not be extinguished with the flick of a switch.

Whether you agree or not, The Farewell Party will certainly make you re-examine on which side of the fence you are impermanently entrenched.

For a film - that is a wondrous achievement.

Trailer...