Home

These are my notes from our last screening.  On balance I enjoyed the film: it was typically French, and any attempt at a US remake would be disastrous.

Home


Switzerland 2009 98 minutes

Director: Ursula Meier

Starring: Isabelle Huppert, Olivier Gourmet, Adelaide Leroux and Jacques Gamblin

Nominations and Awards

• Swiss submission for Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film

• Six wins and five nominations


“It's a nightmare metaphor for the horrors of the modern world, but will seem like everyday reality to anyone living around Heathrow or any motorway.”

Philip French

Marthe (Isabelle Huppert) and Michael (Olivier Gourmet) are living a happy, semi-bohemian life with their three children in a remote decrepit house beside an unfinished motorway. Suddenly the motorway is opened and the family becomes isolated from school, workplace and even the shops: Marthe goes to pieces while Michel purchases insulating material to soundproof the house by blocking up all the windows.

Ursula Meier was born in eastern France close to the Swiss border and studied at the Belgium Institute of Visual Arts. After making her name with a number of prize-winning short films she directed Strong Shoulders (2003) as her first full length feature film. This film was selected for the series New Directors/New Films at the New York Museum of Modern Art in 2003, with Home receiving its first US screening at the same event in 2009. The film was the official Swiss entry for the foreign language film in the 2009 Academy Awards, but it did not even make the shortlist: the Oscar went to Departures, a Japanese film about an apprentice undertaker.

She wrote the script of Home for Isabelle Huppert before she had even been cast and then searched across Europe for a suitable location before finding an unfinished motorway in Bulgaria and building a house next to it.