Rating:
***1/2
Francois Ozon’s psychological thriller In the House is a disturbing portrayal
of the search for literary realism and human intimacy, seen through the eyes of
a troubled and gifted young student.
Adapted from Juan Mayorga’s play The Boy in the Back Row, Ozon’s latest
offering begins by introducing a failed novelist and thus disillusioned literature
teacher at the ‘Lycée Gustave Flaubert’. In an attempt to assess the journalistic
abilities of his new class of students, Germain (Fabrice Luchini) sets them a simple writing task – to create an
account of how they spent their weekends. We observe as he expresses to his
art-curator wife; Jeanne (Kristin Scott
Thomas), his utter disappointment at the amateurisms of his students’
unimaginative and lackluster reports of ‘Pizza’ and ‘Television’, until one
particular paper rouses him from his disdain. Claude Garcia (Ernst Umhauer) writes an essay about
his successful attempt to infiltrate the family home of his affluent classmate
Rapha Artole (Bastien Ughetto).
After many days spent admiring the house from afar, imagining what events could
be unfolding within it’s bourgeois walls from a sheltered bench in the park
opposite, the boy finally devises a plan to allow him to tread the hallowed
ground itself. By offering to tutor flunking student Rapha in Mathematics after
school, Claude is granted access: ‘At
11am, I rang the bell and the house opened itself up to me.’ As Germain and
Jeanne grow further enticed with each peculiar line, they are jolted by the
boy’s depiction of a particular aroma that catches him whilst unashamedly ‘snooping’ around the premises: ‘The scent of a middle-class woman’. On
describing with palpable derision the parents’ voices, clothes and private
conversations, he ends the script with an elusive ‘To be continued…’
Before long, the dormant author in Germain
is awoken by the promise of this aspiring young writer. In weekly sessions,
Claude submits another excerpt of the continuing ‘Rapha family’ saga, whilst
his mentor picks apart his methods and motives. At once criticized for being
too judgmental, then too apathetic, told to simply observe and then to
manipulate, Claude becomes confused and frustrated with his teacher and decides
to make his own decisions about what comes next. He develops an affinity with
fabrication and it soon becomes unclear what is real or fictitious. In the
meantime, Germaine becomes so obsessed with nurturing this nascent talent that
he will do almost anything to see it continue, even at the risk of his own
integrity.
Claude’s erudite fragments quickly switch
from superciliously mocking the family, to longing to be integrated within the
unit. This fixation transpires in a latent physical desire for them, from a
fleeting playground kiss between schoolboys to full blown sexual desire for the
mother, Esther (Emmanuelle Seigner).
One has to question whether Claude’s obsession with ‘middle class women’ –
expressed later by his admiration of Jeanne’s ‘alabaster skin’ - has something to do with his absent mother and
inability to receive love from his badly disabled father in his own house, a
house ‘four times smaller’ than
Raphas, in a neighbourhood ‘Rapha would
never set foot in’.
What results is a harsh and sometimes disorientating
analysis of a writers duty to his reader, including a rather literal
representation of the author’s devotion to making an account come to life on
the page. What is most apparent throughout is a melancholy and uncomfortable
tale of a desperate child, longing for some sentiment of inclusion and
‘normalcy’ in all life relationships – familial, romantic or tutorial.
In
the House personifies the notion that authentic
artistry can guide the voyeuristic gaze of the viewer and the reader alike, and
in this case, the characters themselves. As Claude and Germain struggle to
distinguish fact from fiction, so does the viewer. What results is an almost
Brechtian insertion of the professor within the boy’s story. Seemingly only
apparent within the mind of it’s creator and unbeknownst to its moldable pawns,
we watch as Germain pops up in each scene, from a heated kiss in the Rapha’s
kitchen to an intimate discussion between Rapha and Claude – the teacher is
always there, annotating his narration and urging him to change the arc of that
story, to embellish and create as we start to see each character unravel. Now
we are all truly inside the house.
If one is of the opinion that art imitates
life, this complex and unnerving French feature provides a study of just how
closely the two can intertwine. It’s final scene pays a sinister homage to Rear Window that rounds off an engaging
yet flawed film, depicting a psychoanalytical and sociopathic dissection of our
human need for truth and knowledge.
