Maybe it's just me, but there's something sexy with stories about writers and their writings making it onto film, with recent releases such as Ruby Sparks powering its way into my top film of last year. In The House looks set to do the same too, directed by Francois Ozon, well known for his feature film Swimming Pool (which was also centered around a writer played by Charlotte Rampling),and based on a play written by Juan Mayorga called The Boy in the Last Row. Words cannot deny the genius of both the screenplay and the film's direction in crafting a piece that draws and sucks you into its narrative, becoming what's akin to a page turner that captivates all the way to the finale.

Fabrice Luchini plays Mr Germain, a literature teacher in a school whose lofty ambitions of imparting his vast knowledge go up in smoke with the most uninspired students, until he latches upon the raw talent of Claude Garcia (Ernst Umhauer),which isn't hard since his homework submission on what happened over the weekend was two pages compared to his peers' two liners, and contained all ingredients necessary that would have caught any reader's attention with its yet to be verified autobiographical nature, a hook, and a cliffhanger. Soon Germain slowly discovers that he wanted more, and takes it upon himself to bring Claude under his personal tutelage so that Claude's creative output and juices can get to be nurtured by him.

Kristin Scott Thomas plays Germain's wife Jeanne, who partakes in the same, reading Claude's submissions as she struggles to get her professional art gallery in order, lest it be shut down for the lack of a good exhibition. And the interplay between husband and wife over Clude is something the film excelled in, presenting two sides to an argument whether Claude is imagining it, or telling it as it is experienced, about his near obsession with wanting and eventually getting into the house of his friend Rapha Artole (Bastien Ughetto),which soon evolves into becoming an integral part of the household with his presence on the pretext of tutoring his friend, but essentially being an outlet to get close to Rapha's mom Esther (Emmanuelle Seigner),an infatuation that will take on epic proportions.

Interesting enough, this film works if you'd participate in it just as how both Germain and Jeanne allowed their morbid curiosity to get the better of them. We become those characters personified, and one can imagine just how powerful this is in a staged production. But its effect and impact are not diminished on film, as you'll find yourself demanding more, with Ozon often pulling the plug leaving you wanting more, and lapping everything up with Claude submitting another chapter of sorts being played out on screen. We connect the dots, and partake in the lives of the Artole family, learning about their hopes, dreams, secrets, celebrate in their success, and sympathize when they hit a brick wall. And there are many relationship types in the film, from that of lustful ones, to father-son relations, mentor-mentee, best of friends, and even the recurring GLBT ones that Ozon's films tend to feature.

In truth, watching this film becomes that guilty pleasure that is voyeur central, filled with comedy, drama, and wonderful acting that bring the characters to life, yet having the narrative mileage to pique and sustain one's interest from beginning to end by appealing to our primal curious nature, and really milking and manipulating it, with us allowing it to, and growing increasingly effective as we clamour for Claude to seek out even more intimate moments. It's a scary reflection of ourselves, yet an engagement by a film par none. A definite recommend!

Haven't been tracking Ozon's output for awhile (his previous entry for me is TIME TO LEAVE 2005, 7/10),IN THE HOUSE apparently heralds a pleasing return with his most confident pace and killing panache, delineates a spellbinding yarn withholds which part is really happening and which part is our young writer's fancy imagination.

Slickly shot, the opening upbeat instrumental tune brings viewers instantly to the scenario of a joint action between a high school teacher (Luchini),a has-been below-bar writer and his finest pupil (Umhauer). With mutual assent, Umhauer (comes from a broken family and has to tend his maimed father all by himself) is encroaching one of his classmates' (Ughetto) domestic domain using the practical stalking horse - remedial lessons after school for the latter, whose perfect bourgeois life represents everything he is craving for, mostly a sensual middle-aged mother (Seigner). So he is writing down everything as a serial, detailing (fictional or not) what is happening inside the model family, and the teacher promises to read it, correct it, advice him how to become a real writer.

Obviously from the very first chapter, Luchini has been intoxicated by the story (after a serial of disasters from the retrograded youth, Umhauer's writing could never be more fetching),so is his wife (Thomas),a middle-class gallery owner who is in a dire situation and might lose the gallery if her new collection fail to please her new boss, twin sisters played by an unrecognizable Moreau. As we all fully aware, things will go haywire, and the reverberations will boomerang on someone, and in this case, it is Luchini himself, his life will disintegrate eventually.

Borrowing Umhauer's confession of using the present tense in his works, the film per se contains a certain present vibrancy which is extremely audience-friendly, engaging with a hefty gush of dialogs among its main characters (Luchini with Umhauer, Luchini with Thomas, and Umhauer's self narrative),whether it is florid edification, or common conversations, all fittingly satirise the banality and futility of the status quo one is facing or trapped, like it is said in the film, literature and art cannot teach a person anything, we learn by simply living our lives.

"Falling for your best friend's mother" is a gimmick always has its broad market, especially for a motherless young boy in his puberty, the otherwise corny infatuation here has been ingeniously conflated with a voyeuristic angle for Luchini/Thomas and all its viewers, with its ambiguous credibility, it plays out appositely under Ozon's helm, leaving every on-looker chewing on what has happened and anticipating the twist.

Speaking of the twist, whose concoction is not so fully-developed, but anyhow it is a pleasant achievement, one's seemly stable life can be undermined into a tailspin just like that, it is cinematic, but also cautionary.

Luchini embodies his character with wry self-knowledge, loquacious cadences, swaggeringly entering my top 10 BEST LEADING ACTOR race. Umhauer is the opposite youngster, scrawny, reserved but occasionally glistens with a sinister grin, a very well casting choice. Thomas has really found her way in her French-speaking realm and Seigner, enclosed by a perpetual aura of ennui even during the squabble with her hubby (Ménochet),by comparison, underplays herself and looks like she needs a good rest.

The film ends with a fabulous mise-en-scene, various characters occupied by their own business (a protruding one involving two gun-shots),and we (like Luchini and Umhauer) occupy the front row, relish the privilege of peeping other peoples' lives, colorful, vivid but never satisfied.

"In the House" is an odd and creepy film. It's also very difficult to predict and understand. I noticed that a lot of the reviewers here liked it--just was just left a bit cold.

When the film begins, Germain (Fabrice Luchini) is an older school teacher who seems a bit burned out by his job. However, one of his students has piqued his interest. Claude (Ernst Umhauer) is writing essays about his weekends that are FAR different from the boring and brief ones from his classmates. And, he also writes about the family of one of his classmates--almost like a detached observer watching them and writing about them. It becomes highly inappropriate after a while, as it's clearly violating the family's privacy. But it gets worse--Claude tells his teacher that he doesn't have time to write more--so the teacher steals a math test from another teacher and the boy agrees to keep writing! Huh?! It goes on and on from there and much of it is real and much isn't--and it's often very, very difficult to tell which you are seeing. Some of it is even creepier because it shows a teenage boy making out with a 35-40 year-old lady--and I sure felt uncomfortable with their passionate kissing.

So is this worth seeing? For me, not really. I love some of the acting and actors but the film goes in many directions but never seems to zero in on any one thing. It's creepy but not completely. It seems at first like a dark comedy...but isn't. What is it? I dunno.