Home-Movie Review*** 01/15/2011
Posted by Films to consider in Dark Drama, French language film, Movies, Swiss language film.trackback
Home (Swiss/French) 2008
Winner, Best Technological Achievement (Agnès Godard, Cinematographer) Lumiere Award
Winner, ADF Cinematography Award (Godard); Best Actress (Isabelle Huppert); Nominated Best Film (Ursula Meier), Mar del Plata Film Festival
Winner, Best Emerging Actor (Klein); Best Film; Best Screenplay, Swiss Film Prize
Directed by Ursula Meier
Starring Isabelle Huppert and Olivier Gourmet as the parents, and Adelaide Leroux, Madeline Budd, and Kacey Mottet Klein as the children
A family of five lives in the middle of nowhere, their house located about ten feet away from an unfinished highway. Although not much is revealed about how or why they moved there, it’s obvious that it wasn’t under the best of circumstances.
The family seems happy and is very close, somewhat abnormally so, but their isolated world is about to change. After ten years of delays, the road is about to be finished. With no fanfare, a silent crew of highway workers shows up and moves the family’s belongings off the highway they have used as part of their living space. The new highway brings lots of traffic. As the family tries to adjust to their impossible new environment, each of them flips out in his or her own way.
Be sure to watch the fascinating interview with the director and cinematographer, who received awards for their work on this film. This was the director’s debut feature-length film; one of her short films, Des heures sans sommeil (Sleepless), is included in Special Features.
The interesting version of Wild is the Wind heard during the movie’s closing credits is by Nina Simone.
98 min. Unrated. Some adult themes.
FILMS TO CONSIDER 
[…] Altiplano (in English, High Plateau) refers to a region of the Andes Mountains in southeastern Peru and western Bolivia. The film has garnered some lesser-known awards for independent films. Magaly Solier starred in another film I’d recommend, Milk of Sorrow (review not posted yet); Gourmet plays the father in 2008 quirky film, Home. […]