Francois Ozon (Swimming Pool) is up to his dirty tricks again and this time round, it’s a thoroughly immersive psychological thriller which cleverly interplays the narrative and meta-narrative girds of a traditional screenplay. Audiences are never quite sure where the film is taking us and it’s the unrelenting suspense (Will be there sex? Violence? Murder?) which makes In the House all the more intriguing.
Fabrice Luchini is Germain, a school teacher and failed novelist whose curiosity is piqued when a student Claude (impressive newcomer Ernst Umhauer), who always sits at the back of the class, writes a short story detailing his exploration of a friend’s home for a weekly assignment. Soon Germain becomes the co-author of the narrative and pushes the teenager further into the lives of his best friend Rapha’s (Bastien Ughetto) family home in his somewhat perverse eagerness to know more, much to the chagrin of his devoted wife Jeanne (Kristin Scott Thomas), a sassy art dealer. Vice versa, Germain gets sucked into Claude’s manipulative ways, including risking being suspended by school for stealing a math paper test so that both Claude and Rapha can get As. And as Claude eases his way through Rapha’s dad and hot mom Esther (Emmanuelle Seigner), the narrative gets more and more over-the-top and audiences start questioning what is real and what is not. The mincing of reality and fiction (?) is both smart and sexy, as Claude runs increasing rings around everyone, and his ambiguous genius—and possible sociopathy—ratchets up to deliriously funny levels and an inevitably tragic end.
It’s a tale that could be played for laughs or squeezed for maximum tension and Ozon does both, neatly working multiple layers of intrigue and perfectly timed surprises into his screenplay. True, Ozon could have played up the film’s darker moments but his crafty sense of humor, dealing with values of literature with just enough wickedness and irony, will entertain rather than offend. And the uniformedly compelling cast is a joy to watch every step of the way. Voyeurism and manipulation have never been this fun and accessible.
