A Hollywood pitch for this film might be MRS ROBINSON meets DAMIEN OMEN II. Or, given the way that this creepy yet captivating French film likes to switch roles around, perhaps DAMIEN OMEN II meets MRS ROBINSON.
We first meet 16-year-old Claude (Ernst Umhauer) as the talented yet precocious pupil of jaded middle-aged teacher and failed novelist Germain (Fabrice Luchini). Claude’s writing assignments initially impress Germain then, as he insinuates himself deeper and deeper into the Artole family, reveal disturbing elements.
While helping Rapha Artole Jnr (Bastien Ughetto) with his maths homework he becomes obsessed with the Artole family home’s ‘intoxicating scent of a middle-class woman’, namely that of Rapha’s bored mother Esther (a world-weary Emmanuelle Seigner). An obsession that ultimately leads to him spying on Rapha’s parents making love.
Meanwhile, Germain and his sensual yet sexually neglected wife Jeanne (sympathetically played by Kristin Scott Thomas) become more and entwined in Claude’s assignments — each ending in ‘to be continued’ — which start to blur the line between fantasy and reality. Or do they? And when Claude persuades Germain to steal maths exam questions so that Claude can further worm his way into the Artole family, the teacher-pupil power dynamics are totally reversed.
Along the way, director Francois Ozon throws in an acerbic commentary on modern art, with Jeanne’s gallery displaying at one time almost imperceptibly different photos of a Shanghai sky, at another a disturbing collection of inflatable sex dolls, some resembling Hitler and Saddam Hussein.
Ultimately, the manipulative Claude succeeds in destroying the lives of all the main characters with whom he comes into contact. In the surreal ending of this dark yet wittily entertaining film, one of these will become his accomplice and help him pick out his next victims. ‘To be continued’ indeed.
Francoise Ozon’s DANS LA MAISON (IN THE HOUSE) will screen as part of this year’s French Film Festival.
The 24th annual Alliance Francoise French Film Festival will run between the 5th and 24th March at the Chauvel Cinema, Palace Norton Street, Palace Verona and Hayden Orpheum Picture Palace cinemas.