Home (2008 film)

Plot

Marthe (Isabelle Huppert) and Michel (Olivier Gourmet) live with their three children in a house next to an uncompleted highway. They use the deserted road as an extension to their property. For example, they have an inflatable swimming pool and the son as well as his friends use the highway to ride their bicycles. They have been living for ten years close to the highway and believe that it will not be used. One day without warning, construction workers begin to upgrade the road and the highway becomes open to traffic. Instead of leaving the house, the family continue to live there, despite the increased noise from the passing traffic. It used to be the case that the father would simply walk across the highway in order to use his car to get to work. This becomes more complicated as the highway becomes increasingly used by motorists. He and his children eventually have to use a tunnel in order to gain access to the outside world.

Their younger daughter, Marion (Madeleine Budd), becomes obsessed about the quality and cleanliness of her surroundings. She monitors the grass as it exhibits evidence of carbon monoxide emissions and is convinced that the family will die prematurely, or may fall ill, as a consequence of living in such close proximity to the highway. The elder daughter, Judith (Adélaïde Leroux), continues to lead her life of sunbathing out on the front lawn in her bikini, despite attracting unwanted attention from passing motorists. One day she decides to leave the house and does not return until some time later when, accompanied by a man who is apparently her boyfriend, she finds the house bricked-up and, after an unsuccessful attempt to find an entrance, leaves again.

Meanwhile, the remaining family start to sound-proof their house by bricking themselves into the home. This includes blocking up all the windows and sealing all the ventilation points so no sound can get in. Confined in their own home, the pressure begins to take its toll on the family and, in what appears to be a death dream, they break out of the house into the sunlit outdoors.

Cast

Production

Director Ursula Meier searched for a suitable location across Europe, before finding a spot in Bulgaria. The road itself was already under construction and they then built the house next to the then-unused road. Meier tailored the script with Isabelle Huppert in mind, prior to her casting. While Huppert was in Belgium, engaged in Joachim Lafosse's film "Private Property," she received the script.

Reception

Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, reported an average score of 67, based on 12 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".