Home

Home is a different kind of story about life on the road, with the thoroughfare in this case being an abandoned section of four-lane freeway that has become the front yard for a family living on its edge. When the highway is suddenly reclaimed by road crews and opened to holiday traffic—leading to a nonstop vehicular stream running through the family's once-peaceful life—fragile wife and mother Marthe (Isabelle Huppert) refuses to leave. At this point, filmmaker Ursula Meier's quietly eccentric drama turns surreal: the children are forced to dodge speeding cars to get to school, privacy is a thing of the past, and noise and pollution seep into every corner of their house. Home never explains the hows and whys of the family's situation; it simply recounts in deadpan detail their defiant efforts to continue as usual, along with their increasingly extreme measures to block the intrusion. This parody of urban living starts out as a dryly funny satire but eventually grows darker, moving from humor to unnerving psychodrama tinged with paranoia but never quite tipping into tragedy, as Meier continues to keep hope alive within the close-knit family (the superb Olivier Gourmet is especially good as Michel, the protective father). A decidedly offbeat foreign film, Home is recommended, overall. (S. Axmaker)