Home

Release Date (UK) - 7 August 2009

Certificate (UK) - 15

Country - France

Director - Ursula Meier

Runtime - 95 mins

Starring - Isabelle Hupert, Olivier Gourment, Adélaide Leroux

Isabelle Hupert stars as Marthe, the mother of a French family who live out in the isolated countryside. Seeing as I didn't know what film I was actually seeing before I went to the cinema at first the film I thought the film was going to be some sort of story about their home life as it slowly introduces the slightly unusual but happy family - the oldest daughter Judith (Adélaide Leroux) spends her days sunbathing in a bikini and listening to loud music and is even open enough to bathe with younger brother Julien (Kacey Mottet Klein) whilst the younger daughter Marion (Madeleine Budd) is much more shy and refuses to even wear a swimming costume.

There idyllic lone house lays alongside an unfinished motorway road whose construction was abandoned ten years ago but one night Julien spots trucks and workmen. Before they know it the family's peaceful lifestyle away from society is destroyed as the motorway is re-tarred and opened. The film then follows their refusal to leave their 'home' and the effects the traffic has on them as their privacy is invaded by passing motorists.

Slowly the noise of the cars drives them all crazy, and there are hints that they live out in the peaceful countryside as Marthe couldn't handle life elsewhere, Marion obsesses over the effects of the pollution and one day they return home to find Judith has simply left. However even though the film hints at the mental problems of Marthe in the end it the father Michel (Olivier Gourment) who goes crazy, with a violent outburst trying to physically get them to leave their home and later after insulating the house to block out the noise he bricks them in completely.

There are some very funny moments but they sometimes just don't seem worth the wait of this very slow and bizarre film. 'Home' is trying to create questions of privacy and what a home can mean to us, and perhaps even highlight pollution issues but overall the unexplained questions just leave you feeling that the film is a bit too ambiguous. It is however beautifully shot and typically french in the open interpretations the ending leaves us with.