Film reviews : Pretending to know more than one does... ?

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
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21 April

I have blogged elsewhere how slips in what a reviewer, say, of films writes might make one think that he or she did not see (all of) the film in question. From which one might infer that I think that the minimum that one can expect, if the reviewer did not watch the whole film, is for him or her to say so.

What, though, about a film whose screenplay is not original, but adapted from a book or a play (most higher-budget films are such films) ? Can the reviewer meaningfully comment about the adaptation if, say, he or she has not read the book or play ?

In asking which, I recognize that, with such a film, it is one thing to criticize an infelicity or the implausibility of a character or part of what he or she does, another to locate the reason for it with the various film-makers (screenwriter, director, actor, etc.), without seeming to stop to ask Was this in the original, and what would deviating from that, if possible, have meant – and how would it have been done ?

If, of course, without having read the original book or play and not admitting not to know it, one wrote a review that gave the impression that one had, or that the infelicity or implausibility was squarely that of the film-makers alone, would one be pretending to know things that one did not ? If so, is the temptation for a reviewer to do it to seem convincing in that capacity, authoritative ? :


In the House (2012)

Anyway, let me get on to Francois Ozon's intriguing story of the unusual relationship between a 16-year-old pupil, Claude, (Ernst Umhauer) and his teacher (Fabrice Luchini).

The teacher sets his class the task of recounting what they did the previous weekend and Claude begins a sequence of writing about the home life of a classmate (Bastien Ughetto).

At first, this amounts to viewing through a window but to make the work more realistic he inveigles himself into his subjects' lives.

Gradually, the essays become more sinister and the teacher effectively becomes a voyeur, demanding richer writing from the boy who becomes his 'protege'.

Ozon has adapted Juan Mayorga's play without losing a theatrical feel to the movie (there are only three sets in the film; school, the classmate's home and the teacher's house).

In The House benefits from outstanding performances: Umhauer shows a superb streak of underlying malevolence while Luchini does a fine job as a teacher whose initial apparent naivety may be a cloak for uglier motives.

Courtesy of Neil White (@everyfilmdteled)


I am pretty sure that the Mayorga original has not been read. For one thing, the Amazon® search that I did when I was interested to find the source material suggested that it is not available (not, at any rate, in English, but instead under the name El chico de la última fila (which IMDb gives me)).

However, the reference here is vague enough to suggest that it might be known, but which of us knows whether the play has 'a theatrical feel' to lose ? I suggest that this is an inference, without reference to whether Mayorga wrote in, for example, a naturalistic, post-modern, or Brechtian mode (or a mixture of any one of these and others).

As I have already blogged, the locations are constricted and claustrophobic, but one cannot simply suppose either that the play proposed them, rather than using some other approach or device, and there are more than the three mentioned : near and at the basketball court, outside and inside the cinema, in and around the gallery, and, fleetingly, Garcia's house and a bus.


Here's another take on the film and how it has been constructed:


For a film maker to turn his gaze back on his own narrative can be risky, and exploring the nature of writing and the creative process risks alienating the viewer if not handled well, but François Ozon has a solid track record in handling such matters. In The House creates a world of moral ambiguity within which its characters’ motivations are always reasonable, if not always rational, and events are allowed to spiral gently out of control (or further into control, depending on your perspective). While the genitalia and breast themed artworks on the wall of Jeanne’s gallery suggests that absence of morality becoming more prevalent in contemporary society, the motivations of Germain and Claude are more timeless and satisfyingly shaded in grey. The script by succeeds in having its cake and eating it, cocking its nose at trite genre conventions while successfully weaving them into the plot.

In The House thrives on its relationships: between Germain and Jeanne, the couple whose relationship becomes defined by their reactions to Claude’s work; between Germain and Claude, as the line between fact and fiction blurs and the definition of their pupil and mentor relationship blurs with it; and between Claude and the mother of the family at the centre of his writings, Esther (Emmanualle Seigner), defying the age gap between the two to give an additional layer of uncertainty and ambiguity. These relationships are all sold by uniformly excellent performances from the cast, especially newcomer Unhauer, and it’s a step up from the almost forced frivolity of Ozon’s last film, Potiche. There’s just a couple of unfortunate notes, including the insistence on every French film featuring Kristin Scott Thomas feeling the need in some way to draw attention to her English roots (here a reference to Yorkshire), and the ending, an extra portion of cake too much in the having-and-eating-of-cake. But if I had to mark the efforts of Ozon and his cast, they’d be looking at a solid grade this time around.

Courtesy of The Movie Evangelist (@MovieEvangelist)


If Ozon is the 'film maker', what does he make is film of or from ? Can he be credited with the work - the 'risky' turning 'his gaze back on his own narrative' - when it seems unlikely that Mayorga, with his experience, would have been excluded from participation in the adaptation ?

At the moment, that is just a guess on my part - but is it likely, even if I gather that it happens often enough, that Ozon would simply adapt the play for the screen without seeking Mayorga's input ?

And the ending, whose closing shot The Evangelist tells me that he simply does not like ? - the grammar of the film implies that what we see is and has continued to be what Germain and Garcia are looking at, but that may not be so. Is it any better (or worse) if it is (a) in Germain's head, (b) a deliberately boggling kaleidoscopic depiction of the varieties of life that we can (happen to) see into, or (c) Garcia projecting his imagination onto the world as a creator who has Germain in thrall ?


To be continued



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