Home (Meier, 2008) DVD, 2008

Alex Davidson hopes for a wider audience for this taboo-breaking comedy starring Isabelle Huppert, in which a motorway brings chaos to a family's life.

Home, a new type of road movie in which a family go on a metaphorical journey by staying put and refusing to go “on the road”, is arguably the most striking debut of the year. Isabelle Huppert plays Marthe, the matriarch of a free-spirited family who live in a house by a disused motorway. When the route is reopened and deafening traffic and litter in the garden smash the domestic idyll, Marthe refuses to move, and the family starts to fall apart.

Many dramas detailing familial dysfunction rely heavily on intense scripts to convey emotion, whereas Ursula Meier employs striking symbolism and unnerving tactics to portray the fractures. She is unafraid to explore child sexuality - oedipal undertones pulsate through many of the scenes, while the nude shots of the children breaks what has become a cinema taboo. One daughter relishes sunbathing in her bikini in front of leering lorry drivers, another retreats into germ-fixated paranoia. This daring Swiss film was unfairly ignored by critics on its British cinema run - hopefully its DVD release will bring it to a wider audience.

Alex Davidson on 21st December 2009
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