Watched “In the House” (2012)

There are films in which you don’t really understand what will happen next, but you are simply interested in watching.

And…the film “In the House” is just one of those cases when you can’t tear yourself away from the story being told to you until the very last moment.

Claude is an eighth-grade student who is one of the few who was able to interest his teacher – a French literature teacher named Germain. The fact is that his work is based on a story related to another student from the same class – Rafi. But the story doesn’t end with one work, so the teacher will receive new chapters of the work, a certain Claude writes from nature. Or… from his head?

Modern cinema from time to time creatively approaches the manner of plot development, so there are films where we are told about the events in certain fragments or from the perspective of different people, which allows us to delve into the plot with a certain tone, revealing a certain secret. In this film, François Ozon did not use any unusual techniques and tells everything as it is, gradually revealing the story that is happening in real time. But is it worth believing everything that a guy who studies in the eighth grade writes about?

His teacher and his wife, to whom he reads new chapters of his student’s works, question the fact that the story is developing in this way. Moreover, the teacher advises the student to change the tone of the story a little – to devote more time to certain moments. Because of this, it becomes difficult for you to understand where this path can lead, since on the one hand, the student does actions that the teacher should tell someone about. The student, in turn, seems to be playing with his reader, taking the plot of the story in such twists that sometimes it starts to scare, but… how often can we tear ourselves away from an interesting book or series if the authors have managed to interest us? Moreover, Claude’s teacher is a writer himself (though not a good one), so he has his own view on how everything should develop in the book.

François Ozon’s films are films that you either love with all your heart, because they are “just like that”, have their own charm and taste, or… you won’t understand and say that the film is stupid. So don’t be surprised if in the description under this film you will find both laudatory reviews and more negative ones. In my opinion, in this film the author was able to tell the story very successfully, which makes you expect the next chapter of the story just like Claude’s teacher.

Is the film worth watching? In my opinion, yes. It is a rare case when a film keeps your attention until the last moment, and not in tension, but in some lightness of the story. I give the film 8 out of 10 🙂