French director Ursula Meier’s Home is nothing if not interesting. It’s at the same time a small
character piece looking at a family, an allegory for the way modern culture is
taking over our lives and stripping us of our humanity, and an interesting look
at privacy and how the amount of it we get defines who we are as people. The
family at the center of the story live in an isolated house located right
alongside a long closed highway. Their lives are simple, filled with playful
joy, and without complication. Perhaps even a little too without complication,
as several co-ed bath scenes with children of wildly varying ages shows that
their isolation has stripped them of some societal hang-ups. All of this
changes when the road is repaved and reopened. Suddenly, their lives are
literally and figuratively cut in half by the busy road, countless cars zooming
by, and endless noise. The kids can’t get to school, the adults can’t get any
peace, and none of the family’s usual routines can happen without the scrutiny
of prying eyes. The road acts as a sort of replacement for the Coke bottle
McGuffin in The Gods Must Be Crazy. Suddenly
their bucolic lives are upended, the once pleasant characters turn on each
other, and the once sunny family home is bricked up and turned into a
depressing tomb. The style and presentation of the film slowly transitions from
light romp into manic horror, and it works largely due to the skillful
cinematography. But other aspects of the film don’t work so much for me. Once
things start going bad, the characters went unbelievably nutty, unbelievably
quickly. Their actions and motivations don’t hold up under any scrutiny,
there’s no reason to believe that they would put up with what they do. And as
it all goes south, Isabelle Huppert’s performance gives in to melodrama. Home is interesting enough and pretty to
look at, but not a success.
