Home

Setting up home is the aspiration for most people – a place to unwind with a sense of personal security, and privacy from the outside world. But what happens when this peaceful haven is taken away after ten years of happiness? Marthe & Michel, and their three children, live a fairly idyllic lifestyle, with their home situated next to an abandoned highway that they've converted into their personal playground (son Julien uses it as a bicycle race track, they play games of street hockey, whilst their property's space is extended, using the highway to place furniture, a satellite dish and other items), and only a stone's throw away from beautiful countryside. Though the director takes a fair few liberties with his artistic freedom in setting his one up, he never forgoes realism in its execution, whilst he cleverly handles your uncertainty till the very end. DH

Have you ever found yourself wondering about those people who live right alongside the freeway - the anonymous folk whose lives we peer into briefly as we hurtle our way past their apartments and houses en route to our destinations? Well, the artists who made "Home" certainly have, and the answer they've come up with makes for a fascinating, one-of-a-kind cinematic experience that, even more than most movies, has to be seen to be appreciated.

The family in "Home" leads a relatively carefree and decidedly unconventional lifestyle. Their house stands adjacent to an abandoned freeway, which they use as their own private recreation area. They also view bath time as a communal experience (this being Switzerland and all).

All is going reasonably well (despite some mild familial tension here and there), until one day and without any warning, the roadway is reopened to traffic, shattering the family's once-peaceful existence with the sounds of whooshing cars and honking horns, the penetrating odor of exhaust fumes and fossil fuels, a diminution of privacy (especially during traffic jams), and a nonstop assault on the senses. Even getting to the other side of the road – to school or to work – becomes a daily, death-defying game of chicken with speeding vehicles whose drivers have no intention of slowing down for bothersome and unwelcome pedestrians.

This tremendously odd little film is obviously intended as a parable about the oppressiveness and chaos of modern life as it encroaches ever more forcefully onto the peace and tranquility of a rural existence. The family members become increasingly ill-tempered, paranoid, neurotic, even violent as the outside world inexorably presses its way into their once-placid lives.

But far more than the characters and themes, it is the astonishing mise-en-scene that ultimately works its way into the viewer's psyche and that makes it hard not only to avert one's eyes during the course of the movie but to get back to one's own "reality" once it's over. Director Ursula Meier's work here is reminiscent of Luis Bunuel in one of his less playful moods, as she focuses on a group of everyday people trapped in a surrealistic nightmare from which they are unable to awaken. It is definitely a case in which the scene becomes an integral reflection of the psychological states of the characters.

Isabelle Hupert and Olivier Gourmet play the parents; Madeleine Budd and Kacey Mottet Klein their two children; and Adelaide Leroux, Gourmet's nubile daughter from a previous marriage who spends most of her time sunbathing for the highly appreciative motorists and truckers who keep whizzing on by.

Unique and unforgettable.

Home is a very strange movie. It is a family with two teenage daughters and one young son living in the middle of a huge golden field of grass. A freeway opens right by the house. It gets noisier. The drivers leer. The drivers honk. The noise becomes non-stop. There is a traffic jam and people get out of their cars and stare. The family cannot deal with this and slowly go mad, cementing up the windows. The little boy is the only sane one in the movie. He handles all this as just so much adventure. One daughter is the sort you love to hate, full of herself, selfish, totally absorbed with her appearance, idle, rude. The other is just plain crazy. Mom and Dad are a very loving caring patient couple. It is a movie where the circumstances gradually deteriorate. I think of Roman Polanski's Repulsion for a similar effect. It is like a horror movie -- unpleasantness for the sake of unpleasantness. There are no murders or zombies, just frayed people who cannot cope with the situation. There is quite a bit of nudity, but I just put that down to a difference in the way the French view nudity within the family. It is not sexual. The ending made no sense to me. It just ended things in mid air without any sort of resolution. The whole movie left me queasy, and wondering if perhaps it were some great metaphor than went right over my head.

Kacey Mottet Klein who plays the little boy Julien is an amazing actor. Not once did I notice he was acting. He was completely believable. In one scene he begged his Mom to let him out of being locked in the bathroom. It was heart-melting. I could not stand that frail little character entombed with the rest of that wacko family.

Great insight in EU way of working, the years it takes to built a highway. BUT In the comments i see the movie maker made 1 error: international viewers mostly do not know the way we work in the EU in such cases. If a road, like in this movie, is built, many laws are applicable and even more ways to protest to hold the work up may result in a delay for years. If not all '1000 and one' permits are met, the work has to stop, especially when in the middle of protected nature nearby living area's. The people are no squatters, it is their family home, the children where born there. The parable is great, to be cut off from your existence as you know it, even after years of getting 'warm to the fact this will happen'. This is 1 apart movie, not great, but not small to. Well played, good actors and casting. Different story, deeper meanings in that story. Eight stars ! (I like fast paced movies, ad this is not as fast as the newly built highway which has a big role in it)

Very interesting and surprising film starring one of my favorite actress, Isabelle Huppert. The film describes the changes that take place into an ordinary family who lives next to a highway.One day the highway is opened, and still life turns into a nightmare.Each member of the family deals with the problem in a different way. All of them try to keep on doing the same things in their own way, but things go wronger day by day.The cast play such excellent roles that you can feel the anxiety as they do.I was asking myself during the film Why don't they leave ? But there are no answers, only questions. Enjoy the film and try to find why.