Jamie passion and passionfruit!

A strange film with readings on various levels.  The story is that of a French family who live in bucolic abandon next to a motorway that has never been inaugurated.  It is like paradise for the wife (Isabelle Huppert).  Then, after ten years inaction, the authorities give it an extra layer of paving and open it up.  The rural peace is shattered and we watch the family coming to terms or not with the effects of this new lifestyle: the difficulty of getting across the highway to their car, the contamination of the air and plants, the constant noise, etc.  Family relationships start to get strained.  They block up the house with concrete bricks to get some peace transforming paradise into a type of prison. The rationalists will say ‘Why don’t they get out?’ Indeed, the calvary seems somewhat senseless.  Yet reading the film as a type of allegory of being stuck in a place that changes its nature with you being powerless to do much about it, it could be Planet Earth, a state that becomes a dictatorship, a state at war (there was an Israeli film with a similar theme) or simply a neighbourhood that turns sour. The ending is perhaps a little too open and overall, the film is a little dull unless you engage in this reflection based on what it says.  Ursula Meier does a good job of casting with Huppert and Olivier Gourmet up to their normal level and the photography of Agnes Godard which follows the mood of the story perfectly.

* * * +