IN THE HOUSE
Cast: Fabrice Luchini, Kristin Scott Thomas, Ernst Umhauer
Writer/Director: Francois Ozon
Running Time: 105 mins
Writer/Director: Francois Ozon
Running Time: 105 mins
Names like La Fontaine and Flaubert appear on the board behind outdated school teacher Germain (Fabrice Luchini). Before him sits a drowsy classroom, rows of empty disinterested faces, lost in thoughts other than of the subject under discussion. Germain is well aware that the narrative art of the French novelists will struggle to engender much enthusiasm from this bunch at his disposal, but nevertheless, he ambles around the dwindling meaning and power of his chosen material, frustrated as he corrects the homework which wears itself out stylistically in broken enumerations and brief main clause sequences.
Right at the outset of “In The House” (Dans la Maison) it becomes clear that his life is in a rapidly descending rut until he suddenly reads an intriguing text, handed in by student Claude (a winning debut from Ernst Umhauer).
Claude has an almost obsessive and envious fascination with a classmate’s family unit – and in particular his colleague’s appealing mother – which he documents in a series of regular, insightful bulletins. Germain takes these pages, and pores over the content, and in so doing finds parallels with his own life with and with his marriage to art gallery manager wife Jeanne (an as-always beautifully restrained performance by Kristin Scott Thomas).
Adapting a play by Juan Mayorga, Ozon treats us to insights into both Claude’s and his teacher’s versions of events, resulting in a shadowy indistinguishable series of events where fact and fiction are intertwined.
