There is often disregard for the deeper thoughts of teenagers; their feelings are supposedly set in stone, and everybody knows what to expect. There are ‘regular teenagers,’ and then there are the oddballs, who few take the interest to listen to. Claude (Ernst Umhauer) is an oddball; a ‘back row student,’ but amongst a class of uninterested time-wasters, he is the only one worth his teacher Germain’s (Fabrice Luchini) attention.
Germain’s first assignment of the year, ’48 Hours In The Life Of A Teenager,’ turns out mindless drivel about cell phones and eating pizza, until he comes to Claude’s work, which details – very explicitly – his voyeuristic visits to his friend Rapha’s ‘perfect middle-class house.’ The boy’s writing is skilled, his subject is tantalizing, and Germain has to know more.
Claude continues to submit installments of his ‘project’ to his teacher, each one closing ‘To be continued,’ as he creeps himself closer into the perfect family he so envies. His behaviour is strange: he searches, spies around Rapha’s house, watches the family as they sleep, and goes to extraordinary lengths of manipulation to get what he wants. He exhibits lust over Rapha’s mother, Esther (Emmanuelle Seigner), raving over ‘the scent of a middle-class woman,’ and as his story progresses, Germain and his intuitive wife Jeanne (Kristin Scott Thomas – who speaks fluent French) begin to worry about the dangers of the boy’s obsession, and the outcome it could have for all involved.
In The House is a gripping thriller, which reminds me somewhat of Blue Velvet and Fatal Attraction, in its themes of voyeurism and frightening obsession, and of the overall quality of its plot progression. It is surprising, yet darkly believable, and of course supported by tremendous performances. Luchini’s Germain is reminiscent of Michael Caine’s Frank in Educating Rita: a man weary of his years of thankless literature teaching, with decades of emotional wear on his face, whose interest in life and work is suddenly reignited by a particularly unusual student.
Young Ernst Umbauer is tremendously fox-like in his presence, with a sly smirk always either on his lips or in his eyes. He expresses huge understanding of his topic and something of an omniscient control over Germain, and by extension, Rapha and his family. The two leading males are a very peculiar pair, but have some kind of mutual understanding, and make intriguing friends/enemies.
Creative cinematography – with dizzying fast-motion shots of the busy school, and creeping steadicam spying into the scenes – work with later surrealist sequences, in which Germain enters Claude’s fantasies as they are ‘marked,’ in making this a visually exciting movie, as well as an interesting and well acted one.
In The House is an incredible story of manipulation by a disturbed teenage boy, and how his sinister fantasies impact the lives of those who dare to get involved…and those too intriguing to not become characters in them.
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