In The House - 20th April 2013

I picked this film because it happened to be on at the right place, at the right time. I came out exclaiming “Do the French ever make bad films?” I don’t see a lot of French films but I am never disappointed.

“In The House” revolves around a literature teacher who sets his class the innocent task of writing about their week-end. Unwittingly, this encourages Claude to tell his story about how he has finally managed to gain entry at the house of a schoolmate. These two pages of prose encourage a respectable couple to encourage this pupil to turn life into a novel. It is so fresh and inventive that it could be Woody Allen at his peak, a fact referenced when they are shown queuing to see “Match Point”.

Like the writing and directing the performances are impeccable. You know that Miss Scott-Thomas will produce another impeccable bored, middle-class woman but she is up-staged by Ernst Umhauer making his film debut as the troublesome youth. The revelation, however, is Fabrice Luchini who with one raise of his eyebrow in the opening sequence explains this is a teacher (during a headmaster pep talk) who has heard it all before and is clearly disenchanted in his job.

You could therefore clearly understand why he was intrigued by the raw talent of a pupil and was prepared to take unethical risks at help Claude became the writer he was failed to be.

Possibly you can accuse French cinema of being obsessed with middle-class life but when films are as classy as this, who cares. An unsung masterpiece.