Introduction

This is a post that is a repurposing of an old-school Mini-Review Round-Up post. As stated here I am essentially done with running multi-film review posts. Each film deserves its own review. Therefore I will repost, and at times add to, old reviews periodically. Enjoy!

In The House

This film deals with a fascinating premise of what occurs when a high school student is seemingly drawing from real-life experience about his insinuating himself in another family, and what his French teacher, a frustrated writer, does or does not do to encourage his talent. I sat with this film for a while because I knew I greatly enjoyed it. I loved it for most of the way through, however, I didn’t know how much I liked it in the end mostly because of how it concluded. A lot of that decision to me boiled down to how well I felt the film followed its self-prescribed rule about endings. I concluded that I think it did well. Essentially, you have to keep in mind that there’s a very self-aware narrative being told. There are times when the story may seem a little lost, but, of course, Germain, the teacher, says that very thing to Claude often. And who is molding the narrative ultimately but him? Sure, we’re not always witnessing a dramatization of his writing, but it tends to revolve around him, and he is manipulating those around him in one way or another. The film writes Claude intelligently and he’s acted deftly by Ernst Umhauer such that he’s an interesting character, one that you could at least understand may have a way of wrapping people around his finger, even if you don’t particularly care for him you’re engaged.

On the strength of a majority of the film, and my reconsideration of the end I give it 8/10; your take may have you rate it higher or lower, but it is worth seeing and judging for yourself.