Starring: Fabrice Luchini, Ernst Umhauer, Kristin Scott
Thomas
Despondent over the poor quality of his students’ work,
Mssr. Germain (Luchini) sets an assignment for them to write about their
weekends. All of them returned poorly written pieces, usually no more than a
couple of sentences long. One student however, Claude (Umhaur) writes in detail
about tutoring a fellow student (Bastien Ughetto) in maths whilst also exploring
the boy’s more affluent home and family. Initially alarmed by the personal and
faintly offensive tone, Germain soon comes to admire and nurture Claude’s
writing talent, egging on his pieces of writing about his experiences, even as
they wade into darker territory.
Entertaining and engaging, Dans La Maison is well-structured
but does have a major problem in defining itself within a genre. Films,
obviously, shouldn’t be definitively pidgeon-holed, but the film does stumble
awkwardly between thriller and comedy, though the former genre does eventually
take hold. Elsewhere, the film is strong; kept alive partly through the
powerful and disturbing presence of Ernst Umhauer who, as a protagonist, is
borderline, if not outright, sociopathic, meanwhile Fabrice Luchini’s Germain
remains likable and sympathetic despite not having much to redeem him as a
character either; a testament to Luchini’s acting. Doubtlessly an acquired
taste but a rich one.
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