Francois Ozon is one of contemporary French cinema’s heavyweights, 8 Women being his most internationally successful picture to date. He is part of the ‘new’ French New Wave of directors, Dans la maison being his thirteenth picture to grace a film career that has spanned 15 years, thus far. His latest has a particularly powerful plot with an exceptionally underwhelming conclusion.

 

When cynical high school literature teacher Germain (Fabrice Luchini) discovers that his enthusiastic pupil Claude Garcia (Ernst Umhauer) is basing his creative writing homework on his friend Rapha Artole (Bastien Ughetto) and his family, he chooses to ignore this ethically problematic action.

 

Instead, realizing Claude’s passion and gift for writing, he encourages the teenager to spy on the family’s movements and meet him after class: to develop his observations into a full-fledged, cliché-free narrative. Predictably, this has dire consequences…

 

As this very self-conscious picture unfolds, we dig deeper and deeper into the Artole family and, consequently, Germain’s own life. One comes to realize that he is using Claude’s prose as a way of satisfying his own unfulfilled ambition to become a writer. Eric Rohmer stalwart Luchini is the driving force of the entire picture, portraying the encouraging teacher with unbridled confidence and pernicious pessimism.

 

 

 

 

One feels irritated by the lead’s foolishness but sympathetic toward his unrealized dreams, whilst becoming increasingly intrigued by the relationship Ozon builds between teacher and student, author and reader. A gripping hour and forty five minutes, indeed.

 

A highly fascinating, self-reflexive watch – a writer’s wet dream. Ozon scores yet again.

 

 

 

In the House (2012)

Dans la maison (original title)

 

Mystery | Thriller

 

A sixteen-year-old boy insinuates himself into the house of a fellow student from his literature class and writes about it in essays for his French teacher. Faced with this gifted and unusual pupil, the teacher rediscovers his enthusiasm for his work, but the boy's intrusion will unleash a series of uncontrollable events. 

 

Director: François Ozon

 

Writers: Juan Mayorga (play), François Ozon

 

Stars: Fabrice Luchini, Ernst Umhauer, Kristin Scott Thomas