Dans La Maison / In The House, 11.4.13

A cuckoo-in-the-nest fable, this French hit previewed at the 2012 London Film Festival and was adapted by director François Ozon from Juan Moyoraga’s novel 'The Boy in the Last Row’ (‘El chico de la última fila’). There were echoes of “Notes on a Scandal” as the pic played with themes of voyeurism, power games and the interplay between fiction and reality.

Pupil-Teacher roles reversed:
Ernst Umhauer and Fabrice Luchini 

Ageing teacher and écrivain manqué Germain (masterfully played by the versatile Fabrice Luchini, an actor equally convincing as villain or fool) returns to work appalled to find the Head has reintroduced school uniforms.  The general cluelessness of his new class is redeemed only by the creative writing of new pupil Claude (‘the boy in the last row’), played with withdrawn intensity by 21yo Ernst Umhauer (a wiry Norman blond with a sly grin). 

Plotting his next move: 
Ernst Umhauer as Claude

The boy hands in a series of intriguingly sarcastic stories about his attempts to worm his way into a wealthier classmate’s house and family.  Claude, an outsider with a gift for observing others’ weaknesses, betrays his classmate Rapha by briefly infiltrating his way into the affections of his mother (relentlessly mocked as ‘une femme typique de la classe moyenne’).  But bedding the housewife isn't his primary goal.  Power's the thrill and the real fun's to be had from twisting others around his little finger, like a novelist with his characters.  'As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods' and the prof is no match for this wanton boy. 

Kristin Scott Thomas (Jeanne) & Fabrice Luchini (Germain)

A first-rate score by Philippe Rombi craftily accelerated the pace and ramped up the irony. Ozon coloured the scenes with a deceptive brightness to disguise the games afoot (France has never looked more like America). The art gallery run by Germain's wife Jeanne (briskly played in French by Kristin Scott Thomas) provided a particularly rich comedic vein, its initial exhibition of phallic art mistaken for a porno shop by the pupils.  

Director & screenwriter
Francois Ozon

Any film that starts with a line about coming back to work having spent the holidays reading Schopenhauer can’t be all bad and this was black comedy at its best.  Flick revelled in its dry but literate humour, with Celine's 'Voyage au bout de la Nuit' (a hymn to cynical nihilism) being pressed into action as a weapon at one point!  The French have a talent for films about strangers causing havoc ('La Page-Tourneuse’, 'Carnage') and for sardonic treatment of the sociopathic ('Les Diaboliques', 'Ridicule').  'Eight Women' and 'Potiche' were fun, but this was Ozon's most enjoyable film yet, worth every last centime.