Nue propriété (2006)
Directed by Joachim Lafosse

Film Review

Having won acclaim for his first two full-length films - Folie privée (2004) and Ça rend heureux (2006) - Belgian director Joachim Lafosse continued to pick up plaudits by the bucket load with his third feature, a brooding portrait of a dysfunctional family that has a darkly Brechtian feel to it.  The main characters in the drama - a single mother and her two sons - are trapped in a web of mutual dependency that ultimately drives them into bitter conflict, with devastating consequences.

Despite the film's stark minimalist style and the apparent simplicity of the story it has to tell, Nue propriété is a profoundly intense work that explores the complex and fraught relationship between a mother and her teenage sons with a rare lucidity and sincerity.

Convincing performances from a highly talented cast (including Jérémie Rénier and Isabelle Huppert at their best) - bring an uncompromising realism which, along with some unsettlingly voyeuristic camera work, make this feel more like a fly-on-the-wall documentary than a drama.  This is an arresting and original film, crafted with maturity and insight, and suffused with pathos, poetry and some very disturbing undercurrents.

Film Synopsis

Since her husband left her for another woman many years ago, Pascale has struggled to keep her family farm in Belgium going, with the support of her two sons, François and Thierry.  Although the brothers are twins, they are temperamentally very different and react in different ways to the news that their mother intends selling the farm so that she can manage a guest house in the Alps with her new partner.  François and Thierry have come to regard the farm as theirs forever, so the realisation that it is soon to be taken from them comes as a terrible shock.  It isn't long before the two brothers and their mother all come to blows.  Their former tranquil existence is well and truly over as they get caught up in a private war that threatens far more than just a family breakdown...