The film is adapted from the Spanish play The Boy in the Last Row by Juan Mayorga and marks the latest in an extremely prolific career of its director, Francois Ozon. The story concerns Germain (Fabrice Luchini), a middle-aged literature teacher in a French high school. Germain is bored, contemptuous of his colleagues and inwardly frustrated at his own literary failings. Enter Claude, a seemingly shy student whose first piece of homework peaks Germain's interest. Asked to write about what they did over the weekend, Claude's essay detailing his gradual ingratiation into a classmate's family initially worries Germain, yet believing there to be a writer's talent within Claude, he begins to encourage him and further ingratiate himself into his classmates family. What follows sees the two characters plunged into their own separate obsessions. Claude, reveling in the seemingly idyllic middle-class familial structure which he lacks, and Germain, vicariously living out his own literary ambitions through his young student.
Highly intelligent, Ozon grips the viewer throughout the entirety of the movie. What is so interesting is the structure of the narrative. Claude's encounters with his classmate Rapha's family is all told in retrospect through his essay which Germain will take home and read to his wife (played by the sublime Kristin Scott Thomas). This use of retrospective narrative makes the film highly interesting and is done subtly and with great sophistication. As the film progresses the audience is kept in constant suspense as these retrospective flashbacks become an almost work in progress, as Claude works with Germain to construct the perfect story. This gives us quite an uncomfortable look at a normal middle-class family and serves as a warning to the dangers of voyeurism and the distinctions between artifice and reality.
Despite the uncomfortable look into suburbia through the voyeuristic eyes of a teenage boy the film is very playful and witty. The writing is extremely taut and there are some marvelous performances. Fabrice Luchini, one of France's highest regarded actors is an actor whose work I have long admired and plays Germain with such nuance that we feel both sorry for him and slightly detest him at the same time. Emmanuelle Seigner brings and ethereal and sad Esther, the mother of Claude's friend Rapha, who Claude seems to think part mother substitute, part potential conquest. Newcomer Ernst Umhauer succeeds as the teenage Claude, damaged enough to perhaps get our sympathy yet subversively arrogant and conniving. However, as with all films that star Kristin Scott Thomas, the film ultimately belongs to her in regards performance. Having lived in France longer than England, she now regards herself as French, this clearly being reflected in her recent and perhaps career-best roles (Sarah's Key and I've Loved You So Long). Wife to Germain, and trying to keep her failing art gallery from closure (including an exhibition that includes blow-up dolls with the faces of infamous dictators - quite hilarious!) she just commands the attention of the viewer in any scene she is in.
In the House (Dans La Maison) does what any piece of film, not just French, should do. It doesn't dumb down for the viewer. There is a mutual respect between viewer and film-maker - a recipricol recognition that yes, an intelligent film imbued with humour, satire, and a thought-provoking story is wanted. Ozon's movie gives us that. Perhaps slightly drawn out at the end, the film can proudly sit alongside its counterparts of French cinema and is a film that anyone who considers themselves a fan of cinema (ou, un cinephile, as the French would say) should see. Monsiuer Ozon et tout les autres, bravo!
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