By Chris Tookey
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In The House (15)
Verdict: Civilised French comedy thriller
French auteur Francois Ozon’s In The House is an elegant, sophisticated black comedy thriller with a lot to say about storytelling, control and manipulation of the truth.
Fabrice Luchini plays a world-weary teacher whose favourite subject is creative writing. He’s in the classical, realist tradition, with admiration for Flaubert and Dickens.
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French auteur Francois Ozon¿s In The House is an elegant, sophisticated black comedy thriller
His arty wife (Kristin Scott Thomas, pictured above with Luchini) has more modernist tastes, which he despises, not without reason, as pretentious.
Both are drawn to the writing of his pet pupil, a handsome but creepy 16-year-old (superbly played by 21-year-old Ernst Umhauer), a working-class lad starved of love who infiltrates the ‘perfect’ middle-class family of his best friend.
Over some weeks, the teacher and his wife read with appalled fascination the tale of the boy’s seduction of the family, before they are dragged into the narrative and have to decide for themselves whether it is realistic or post-modernist.
Whatever else it is, this tale of a tale is gripping and entertaining.
In French, with English subtitles, it’s wordy â€" based as it is on Juan Mayorga’s play The Boy In The Last Row â€" but toys cleverly with our expectations.
The acting is impeccable. The half-nurturing, half-jealous father-son relationship between teacher and pupil is acutely observed.
The shifting attitudes of the two middle-aged women (Scott Thomas and, within the story, Emmanuelle Seigner) from quasi-maternal to something more sexual has a real erotic charge.
This is easily Ozon’s finest film, miles better than his early, patronising attempts at sk ewering the bourgeoisie in Sitcom and Eight Women.
Though ultimately it can be categorised as a comedy, be warned (or encouraged) by the fact that it’s aimed at the mature, thoughtful end of the cinema-going spectrum and could hardly be further away from the Hollywood mainstream.
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