Rating: R | Runtime: 105 minutes | Release Date: October 10th, 2012 (France)
Studio: Wild Bunch
Director(s): François Ozon
Writer(s): François Ozon / Juan Mayorga (play)
âWhatâs a perfect familyâs house like?â
What happens inside oneâs home is sacred. Your skeletons are exposed, carefully manufactured façades rest for the night, and pent up frustrations boil to the surface in a cathartic outburst of unchecked emotion and fatigued spirit. This is why voyeurism has such a psychologically sensual appeal in its incomparable way of satisfying oneâs desires, fantasies, and curiosity. When our lives hit a rut of dull monotony we find ourselves searching for outside entertainmentâthrough books, movies, videogames, hobbies, or that unavoidable satisfaction of stumbling upon a secret we simply must see through to its end. Weâll hypothesize salacious conclusions, insert ourselves into the action, and reach complete absorption to the point where our reality suffers as a result. And just as we enjoy someone elseâs troubles, others will clamor for more of ours.
This is the theme François Ozon toys with in his new film Dans la maison [In the House]. Adapted from Juan Mayorgaâs play âEl chico de la Ășltima filaâ [âThe Boy in the Last Rowâ], Ozon introduces us to bored high school literature teacher Mr. Germain (Fabrice Luchini) and his rapidly dwindling excitement towards the new year. Slogging through a pile of throwaway assignments meant to gauge his studentâs aptitude for composition by posing the simple question âWhat did you do over the weekendâ, he grows tired of the futility of grading to languish in a self-pity so deep he also canât help but ignore his wife Jeanneâs (Kristin Scott Thomas) precarious occupational plight as gallery director of a museum without an willing owner. Only the strangely captivating work of young Claude Garcia (Ernst Umhauer) piqueâs his waning interest.
Caught in this boyâs obsession with classmate Rapha Artoleâs (Bastien Ughetto) seemingly idyllic home, Germain finds himself enraptured in the proseâs ambiguous state between fact and fiction. Believing it to be imaginative hyperbole on behalf of Claude, he takes the aspiring writer under his wing to teach him what it means to tell a story. Making notes on style, lending novels to help hone his voice, and even nudging the boy to change focus and beef up certain âcharactersâ, Germain sits back and watches as his every suggestion finds Claude the character fulfilling his desires on the page. The question then remains whether or not Claude the student has brought those words to life inside the Artoleâs house of mundane secrets and sexual prisons. Who is leading who on, what is real, and whoâs fantasies are we the audience viewing?
There are deliberately constructed levels to In the House from Germainâs obsession overtaking integrity, Claudeâs curiosity and sociopathic joy in control manipulating everyone around him, and the Artole familyâs perfection shattering to reveal inevitable cracks beneath its otherwise impeccable exterior. Ozon wants us to peer in and make assumptions about each familial unit as they exit the tedium of their own to live vicariously through each otherâs. Claude pines for a parent to guide his wiser than his years curiosity, Germain for the life of a successful writer he never achieved, and Rapha the confidence to exit his fatherâs shadow and be himself. Each uses the people who are using them, skewing the truth to satisfy personal desire until the story becomes too much too handle and the guilt of complicity sets in.
But we engage in this dance each time we buy a ticket at the movie theaterâwillfully leaving our lives behind to sit in the dark and experience those of others. While weâre able to escape after the credits, however, each new page of Claudeâs story spills into Germainâs life. The boyâs characters are real; Rapha is in his class and the want to discover more leads this respected teacher down a path he cannot return from. Itâs a story within a story that holds actual consequences as actions turn to blackmail and passivity to anger. An innocent story evolves into a suspense-filled melodrama of illicit relationships, overwhelmed bystanders, and the complete uprooting of lives. Much like Alfred Hitchcockâs Rear Windowâbeautifully homaged in Ozonâs final frameâcuriosity will kill the cat.
Umhauer plays the Pied Piper that is Claude fantastically, creating drama where there was none and refusing to hold back when opportunity presents. Everything we see of him inside the Artole house comes from the words he writesâone scene even repeats as he heeds Germainâs advice about simplification. Does he inject himself into their private nuclear contingent and seduce not one but two of its members? Are their troubles as complicated and vast as he describes? Or is every little detail simply one more deliberately positioned morsel for Germain to grasp, twist, and react towards? Claude Garciaâs masterpiece soon becomes more than a story scrawled upon lined paper as he begins orchestrating his teacherâs very life, transforming it into the perfect metaphorical juxtaposition to Scott Thomasâ Jeanneâs subversion of visual art displayed at her museum.
With great turns from the Artole familyâMom (Emmanuelle Seigner), Dad (Denis MĂ©nochet), and sonâthat play with a highly stylized sheen straight from the mind of their sixteen-year old orator, In the House becomes as fabricated as the lives it portrays. We try hard to distinguish truth from fiction and forget the whole is a story in itself. As with reality, the allure of the unknown brings the danger of relinquishing our own identity to become that with which weâre obsessed. Luchiniâs Germain embodies us in his eagerness to escape inside a world he has no control over. He lets his own life implode so he may linger with one that not only isnât his but may not be real at all. This is cinema in a nutshell. Ozon lures us in and doesnât let go.
photography:
courtesy of www.unifrance.org