HOME |  CULT MOVIES | COMPETITIONS | ADVERTISE |  CONTACT US |  ABOUT US
 
 
 
Newest Reviews
American Fiction
Poor Things
Thunderclap
Zeiram
Legend of the Bat
Party Line
Night Fright
Pacha, Le
Kimi
Assemble Insert
Venus Tear Diamond, The
Promare
Beauty's Evil Roses, The
Free Guy
Huck and Tom's Mississippi Adventure
Rejuvenator, The
Who Fears the Devil?
Guignolo, Le
Batman, The
Land of Many Perfumes
Cat vs. Rat
Tom & Jerry: The Movie
Naked Violence
Joyeuses Pacques
Strangeness, The
How I Became a Superhero
Golden Nun
Incident at Phantom Hill
Winterhawk
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City
Maigret Sets a Trap
B.N.A.
Hell's Wind Staff, The
Topo Gigio and the Missile War
Battant, Le
Penguin Highway
Cazadore de Demonios
Snatchers
Imperial Swordsman
Foxtrap
   
 
Newest Articles
3 From Arrow Player: Sweet Sugar, Girls Nite Out and Manhattan Baby
Little Cat Feat: Stephen King's Cat's Eye on 4K UHD
La Violence: Dobermann at 25
Serious Comedy: The Wrong Arm of the Law on Blu-ray
DC Showcase: Constantine - The House of Mystery and More on Blu-ray
Monster Fun: Three Monster Tales of Sci-Fi Terror on Blu-ray
State of the 70s: Play for Today Volume 3 on Blu-ray
The Movie Damned: Cursed Films II on Shudder
The Dead of Night: In Cold Blood on Blu-ray
Suave and Sophisticated: The Persuaders! Take 50 on Blu-ray
Your Rules are Really Beginning to Annoy Me: Escape from L.A. on 4K UHD
A Woman's Viewfinder: The Camera is Ours on DVD
Chaplin's Silent Pursuit: Modern Times on Blu-ray
The Ecstasy of Cosmic Boredom: Dark Star on Arrow
A Frosty Reception: South and The Great White Silence on Blu-ray
You'll Never Guess Which is Sammo: Skinny Tiger and Fatty Dragon on Blu-ray
Two Christopher Miles Shorts: The Six-Sided Triangle/Rhythm 'n' Greens on Blu-ray
Not So Permissive: The Lovers! on Blu-ray
Uncomfortable Truths: Three Shorts by Andrea Arnold on MUBI
The Call of Nostalgia: Ghostbusters Afterlife on Blu-ray
Moon Night - Space 1999: Super Space Theater on Blu-ray
Super Sammo: Warriors Two and The Prodigal Son on Blu-ray
Sex vs Violence: In the Realm of the Senses on Blu-ray
What's So Funny About Brit Horror? Vampira and Bloodbath at the House of Death on Arrow
Keeping the Beatles Alive: Get Back
   
 
  In the House Schoolboy Report
Year: 2013
Director: François Ozon
Stars: Fabrice Luchini, Ernst Umhauer, Kristin Scott Thomas, Emmanuelle Seigner, Denis Ménochet, Bastien Ughetto, Jean-François Balmer, Yolande Moreau, Catherine Davenier, Vincent Schmitt, Jacques Bosc, Stéphanie Campion, Diana Stewart, Ronny Pong
Genre: DramaBuy from Amazon
Rating:  6 (from 1 vote)
Review: Mr Germain (Fabrice Luchini) is a French teacher who despairs of the lack of imagination and initiative in his students. He set his pupils an assignment to write an essay about what they did over the weekend, and most of the responses he received were a few lines of garbage, briefly mentioning such activities as watching television or being bored because their mobile phone was confiscated. Germain laments to his wife Jeanne (Kristin Scott Thomas) about the state of the future if that's the best the younger generation can come up with, but then he starts reading an essay by Claude (Ernst Umhauer)...

That essay details the boy's entrance into a middle class household whose lifestyle he has coveted, on the pretense of helping the son, Rapha Junior (Bastien Ughetto), with his maths homework. This is a lot more interesting to Germain, but is his captivation because he recognises a valid talent for writing in the sixteen-year-old, or is it because he is giving into an innate voyeuristic desire that we may all have to some degree or other? If it was the latter, then writer and director François Ozon had some news for you: spend too much time obsessing over the world of others and you neglect your own.

Not only that, but once you have introduced yourself into these walls by dint of your observation, the fact is you may not be able to stop, and that could very well be your undoing. As Claude goes further, penning reports on his activities in insinuating his way into the Rapha family to indulge his motives towards the mother, Esther (Emmanuelle Seigner), the more Germain wants to read the resulting essays, and to ensure this reportage is sustained he begins to manage the lives of others, telling himself he's doing this for purely academic reasons and to encourage the talents of Claude, but actually because he enjoys the illicit thrill of watching vicariously through his pupil's experience.

But there's a snag to all of this, because in the audience's role we are behaving just as Germain is, wanting more from Claude, which presumably makes Germain our surrogate in the story, except we are watching and judging his life just as he and his student are to the Artole clan. The snag being, we really only have Claude's word for it that this is all going on, so he may be an unreliable narrator, and more than that, Ozon may be the same, so what you were actually experiencing was a fiction which could just as easily be making a judgement on us as the characters were judging one another. Naturally, after a while you grow suspicious: exactly what is Claude up to?

According to his writings, he wants to get closer to Esther, so on one level this was paying tribute to Pier Paolo Pasolini, most obviously that old cultural touchstone Teorema, but Ozon, adapting a play by Juan Mayorga, was going further. This was not simply the tale of a young boy who enters a close-knit household and through his own mysterious desires turns it upside down - he doesn't even really do that, when you get down to it - but the story of a man who deluded himself into thinking he was acting intellectually when what he actually wanted was a good old fashioned gossip, and spying on an unknowing situation was the best way he could do so, kidding himself that he's not doing it in the first person so it must be acceptable. Of course, unless this is what you carry out in real life there's a difference between watching a film and eavesdropping on people, so you can tell yourself fiction is a more justifiable method of observing human behaviour, yet Ozon wondered aloud here, what's the difference? To which the answer would be, well, you started it, and this isn't a documentary. Music by Philippe Rombi.
Reviewer: Graeme Clark

 

This review has been viewed 3057 time(s).

As a member you could Rate this film

 
Review Comments (0)


Untitled 1

Login
  Username:
 
  Password:
 
   
 
Forgotten your details? Enter email address in Username box and click Reminder. Your details will be emailed to you.
   

Latest Poll
Which star probably has psychic powers?
Laurence Fishburne
Nicolas Cage
Anya Taylor-Joy
Patrick Stewart
Sissy Spacek
Michelle Yeoh
Aubrey Plaza
Tom Cruise
Beatrice Dalle
Michael Ironside
   
 
   

Recent Visitors
Darren Jones
Mark Le Surf-hall
Enoch Sneed
  Louise Hackett
Andrew Pragasam
Mary Sibley
Graeme Clark
  Desbris M
   

 

Last Updated: