European Films

Family tensions suddenly come to a boil in Belgian director Joachim Lafosse's Nue propriété (Private Property), a surprisingly gripping drama that is part of the Official Competition here in Venice. Twin brothers Thierry and François (played by real-life brothers Jérémie and Yannick Renier) and their divorced mother Pascale (Isabelle Huppert) live on a comfortable farm in French-speaking Belgium. When Pascale announces that she is thinking of selling the farm since the boys will probably move out soon, the quiet family dinners turn into a family battlefield. Lafosse is completely in command of his tricky material, using static images in which the characters move in and out of the frame to great effect. He also draws three performances from his main actors that anchor the picture in a sense of family familiarity which underlines that those who know each other best also know how to hurt each other the most. Arthouse play throughout Europe and possibly North America, would be more than deserved.

Spurred on by a newfound sense of self that her relationship with the Flemish neighbour Jan (Lafosse regular Dirk Cuppens) gives her, Pascale contemplates opening a Bed and Breakfast in the South of France that will finally allow her to do something for herself. To be able to realise her dream, she will need the money that selling the house in which her children grew up might give her. But Thierry and François are under the impression that the house is actually theirs, and they try to get their father -- who has now started a new family elsewhere -- to confirm this.  

Pascale loves her two twenty-something sons, but she finds especially the impetuous Thierry unbearable at times. Lafosse subtly introduces this in the film from the first scene, in which Pascale tries on a new nightgown and asks François -- who is a lot more like his mother and much closer to her -- what he thinks of it. He thinks she looks nice, to which Thierry then adds: "Yes, if you want to look like a whore". Pascale is too tired of Thierry to reprimand him properly, though he concedes that he was only kidding. This motif of his mother's humiliation in the name of teasing is used several times before the bomb explodes and cleverly indicates that Pascale is probably at least partially responsible for not having reigned in her children earlier.

The film slowly introduces the idea that especially Thierry is still a child, though it is François who asks his mother if he could come along in case she really did move to France. The fact that Thierry is played by Jérémie Renier, the same actor who played the titular character in the Golden Palm winner L’enfant (The Child) only amplifies this and it is curiously eerie to see him cry, since it so so strongly echoes the Dardenne brothers’ closing scenes. Lafosse however is not an epigone of the Dardennes but can stand comfortably on his own both as a writer and a director.

Especially noteworthy is his use of static imagery in which the camera does not move and the actors are thus confined inside the picture plane as if trapped, something which makes perfect sense thematically here and which strongly contrasts with the Dardennes' trademark handheld camerawork, even if cinematograpgher Hichame Alaouie collaborated on both films (he was an assistant on L'enfant). The film's last shot, though accompanied by overbearing orchestral music that diminishes its emotional punch, is strongly resonant because it is a literal and symbolic escape from the confines of the titular property.

Nue propriété might belong to the already overcrowded group of dysfunctional family dramas, it certainly is one of the better, more nuanced and rich additions to have come out of Europe in recent years, announcing Lafosse as an important new voice in European cinema.