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I recently saw this at the 2010 Palm Springs International Film Festival where writer/director Ursula Meier was on hand at my screening for an audience Q&A following the film. Meier explained that she got the idea for the film by seeing a house near a busy highway and letting her imagination run away with what kind of people would live there and the effect of being so close to a highway on them. I think we have all wondered about the inhabitants of homes we've seen while riding in a train or car and seeing homes without freeway barrier walls exposed to the noise of the traffic. In this story a family of five live in home where a major highway has been built running through their front yard. this major thoroughfare was never completely finished or opened to use so it has sat unused for years. The family uses the pavement for their personal use and has all their lawn furniture, etc. on it. One day the family learns the highway will be finished and opened at last and the result has a dramatic effect on their lives. They have lived there for 10 years. The mother has a fear of going out in public, the father is claustrophobic, the oldest daughter wants to escape from her boring existence at the isolated house, the youngest daughter is a mathematics and statistics whiz with an accelerated phobia for toxins and the boy is a pretty normal kid who likes hanging out with his friends. This is a strange and quirky film and pretty good as a debut feature for Meier. It was Switzerland's official submission to the 82nd academy awards for Best foreign Language Film. Some very good films come out of Switzerland but I don't think this warrants a BFLF submission. This may too slow and strange for many so I can't recommend it to a general audience but it's different and I would give it a 6.5 out of 10.

I think that film is full of metaphors whether the director has an aim like that. Mainly, I got the idea of "interventionism to private life". What if some people intervene to your life? Or what if "the state" intervenes your life? I felt a referral to "Big Brother" issue too! Also film lights the way for environmentalism issues. Another issue is "resistance to change". It shows what happens if you resist to change. Feelings of stay-cation and isolation results in craziness. Isabelle Huppert is again at the top of her role playing skills.There is an approach to unknown. None of us had thought living at the edge of a motorway but there are real people living like this. The film's strength is here I think. It shows us something that we see nearly everyday but did not touch or feel even once.

Great insight in EU way of working, the years it takes to built a highway. BUT In the comments i see the movie maker made 1 error: international viewers mostly do not know the way we work in the EU in such cases. If a road, like in this movie, is built, many laws are applicable and even more ways to protest to hold the work up may result in a delay for years. If not all '1000 and one' permits are met, the work has to stop, especially when in the middle of protected nature nearby living area's. The people are no squatters, it is their family home, the children where born there. The parable is great, to be cut off from your existence as you know it, even after years of getting 'warm to the fact this will happen'. This is 1 apart movie, not great, but not small to. Well played, good actors and casting. Different story, deeper meanings in that story. Eight stars ! (I like fast paced movies, ad this is not as fast as the newly built highway which has a big role in it)

Setting up home is the aspiration for most people – a place to unwind with a sense of personal security, and privacy from the outside world. But what happens when this peaceful haven is taken away after ten years of happiness? Marthe & Michel, and their three children, live a fairly idyllic lifestyle, with their home situated next to an abandoned highway that they've converted into their personal playground (son Julien uses it as a bicycle race track, they play games of street hockey, whilst their property's space is extended, using the highway to place furniture, a satellite dish and other items), and only a stone's throw away from beautiful countryside. Though the director takes a fair few liberties with his artistic freedom in setting his one up, he never forgoes realism in its execution, whilst he cleverly handles your uncertainty till the very end. DH

Isabelle Huppert is a French mother of three, whose husband goes off to work in a big green diesel Mercedes estate. Their youngest is a boy, about 8. Then a girl, about 14, who's studious and questioning. Eldest is a late-teen daughter who wears as little as possible, chain-smokes and sunbathes in a bikini on a lounger in the garden, with heavy metal pounding from a ghetto-blaster.

This scenario and scene is featured and remains with us most of the time, in one form or another. Oh, except that their rather run-down shabby house sits right bang next to a motorway, that carries no traffic, except as the biggest car park imaginable for the family, who also use it as an extension to their property. They need to cross this bitumen desert to reach civilisation; work, shops and school for the kids.

One day, the boy sees trucks on the carriageway, whilst out on his bike. Soon after telling his father, who doesn't believe him, the motorway is resurfaced overnight. Radio reports say that it's the missing link in the national network and there's huge interest from the motoring public. The two youngest anticipate some new projects coming on.

What happens next is bizarre, believable and really rather frightening. And comical. By trying to live their (rather odd) lives exactly as before - crossing the road for school, shopping, bikini-sunbathing - all a few feet away from juggernauts and during a heatwave.

The way that the stakes against them get higher and naturally seem more bizarre, the more they try and carry on regardless, perhaps in the same way as if you tried to re-route an ant trail. Toward the end, you will start wondering where on earth all this can possibly lead to - I'm not going to spoil it for you!

I did think of one of Michael Haneke's early films when watching 'Home' that had this sort of 'in reverse' psychology, but which was decidedly cold, un-humorous - about a perfectly ordinary middle-class Austrian family, who coped - and then didn't.

You can, of course, take Swiss director Ursula Meier's fable as a comedy, or an environmental statement or a family drama, or all three. Being very different, it grabs the attention, without ever being ridiculous and somehow manages to sustain this element and story all the way through. It's also decidedly 'Continental', the bathing habits of the eldest daughter, naked and smoking in the bath listening to her Walkman, with the rest of the family chatting away next to her, mostly clothed. This - and other forms of a natural lack of inhibition seems healthy and refreshing, especially compared to our British straight- laced ways.

I give 9/10 as it's an ambitious film in both its audacity and originality and the fact that it gets away with it, becoming a sort of psychological horror. . .For a film to be so memorable is rare these days, although the title, unfortunately is. All the players, especially Huppert (naturally) are uniformly excellent and totally believable, as is their environment, which IS worrying....