Isabelle Huppert is Pascale, a single mother who, ten years after her divorce from ex-husband (Patrick Descamps), still refuses to allow him to visit their rural home (a renovated Belgian farmhouse) to see their nearly-grown sons, fraternal twins Thierry and François (played by real-life brothers Jérémie and Yannick Renier). The film opens with Pascale asking their advice while models a new negligee, and later they share a bathroom while she showers, not bothering to even close the curtain. Given their close relationship and the fury over the divorce that Pascale single-handedly stokes (she blithely bad mouths him to the boys at the dinner table, her version of harmless small talk), it creates a perverse atmosphere for the boys to grow up in. Or in this case, not to grow up. They ostensibly attend college but their classes have the feel of afterthoughts, something to do when bored. Meanwhile Pascale keeps up a furtive affair with Jan (Kris Cuppens), a Flemish neighbor who keeps pushing her to go public with their relationship to her kids. Perhaps she understands all too well their inevitable reaction, especially when she reveals her plan to sell the house and buy a bed-and-breakfast.
The story has autobiographical roots. "I was personally confronted with this situation in my family," explains Lafosse in an essay that accompanies the DVD. "This is what gave me the idea of writing the story of two brothers who treat their mother as if they were her parents. And she finds herself in the strange situation of having to ask their permission to break free." According to Lafosse, he developed the script with Jérémie and Yannick Renier in mind. "From the start, when I began writing, I asked them to participate," he relates. "What I didn't know was that it would take seven years to make the film."
Jérémie Renier (star of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's L'enfant and La Promesse) plays Thierry, the hot-tempered blonde whose angry response to his mother's decision to sell the home is just another example of his childish sense of entitlement. Supported by his father's alimony and generous handouts, he even begrudges his girlfriend's job when it gets in the way of his spontaneous plans. Jérémie's older brother, Yannick Renier, is a less familiar screen face his career has been largely on stage. His character, François, is more easy-going and less confrontational than Thierry, who tends to browbeat the submissive François. He's happy just shooting rats at the river with an air rifle, but he becomes more protective of his mother as Thierry becomes more insolent and aggressive in his rage. Yet in their scenes together, playing ping-pong and roughhousing like children (and even bathing together!), their natural, unforced byplay communicates a fraternal familiarity that grounds their relationship. "On the set, we tried to find an identity, then let ourselves go, knowing we wouldn't judge," remembered Jérémie. "Before shooting started, we spent a lot of time together to try and get back a sense of brotherhood." According to Yannick, "when the brothers had to establish their everyday movements, we thought about what we did when we were younger...."
Huppert, by contrast, was cast late in the process, long after the character was written. But she fills the role of the frustrated mother as if it was tailored to her. After a lifetime of treating them more like spoiled younger brothers than sons refusing to set limits or provide boundaries until they've drifted into the lazy inertia of their present lives, all the while obediently making their meals and their beds she's turned her children into dependent child-men. Now she's too timid to stand up for herself and her desires for an adult life with another man. As the tensions build to the snapping point, next to Jérémie Renier increasingly volatile and hostile Thierry, the petite Huppert looks more pale and fragile than ever.
Private Property is all about putting everyday moments under a cinematic microscope to find the toxic reality under unspoken thoughts and repressed feelings. Most scenes unfold in a domestic space and a familiar activity, whether it's the boys giggling and goofing while playing videogames in the living room or eating dinner at the family table with mom. Director Lafosse directs with a quietly intense focus, shooting each scene with an unmoving camera in unbroken takes. It's a nature study of the dysfunctional family unit in its native habitat and Lafosse's camera captures every behavioral nuance with cold clarity. Which is not say it's unemotional. These characters are driven by unchecked feelings pushed to extremes fear, betrayal, fury that build such force they threaten to break out of the increasingly claustrophobic frame. The film ends in a state of exhaustion, spent by such furious feelings that all these characters have left is a broken resignation.
New Yorker's DVD release features an anamorphic transfer of the film, with muted colors appropriate to the domestic spaces and scenes, and a 5.1 Dolby Surround soundtrack, in French with unremovable English subtitles. The DVD features the American trailer as its sole supplement but is accompanied by a fold-out insert featuring a brief essay by and interview with director Joachim Lafosse and brief production notes.
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by Sean Axmaker
