In the House - "No. It's not me you love. It's an image. An image in your head."

This French film was a really original experience. The story is about a literature teacher and one of his students who he believes has the potential to become a great writer. The teacher assigns a writing task and this special student decides to write about a carefully selected fellow student.

In order to have enough content for his writings, he decides to become his math tutor so he can spend time with him and his family, but he never tells this friend nor the family that he is writing about them. They believe he is just there in the house to teach math, and they grow fond of him.

Both the student and the literature teacher become totally immersed in what he writes, the teacher even shares his writings with his wife, which is very weird but well... the entire movie is kind of weird, a little boring at the beginning because I was expecting a real mystery, but in the end, it was worth it. Although I wouldn't say this is a good mystery movie and despite the fact I decided to watch it expecting a good mystery, I would say it is a good movie.

What is interesting in this movie is that the lines between his real experiences teaching math and what he is writing begin to merge, and a lot of the scenes are narrated by the student which made me remember the narrations from Tobey Maguire in The Great Gatsby. Eventually, the viewer can become unable to recognize what happened for real and what happened in his mind. The most genius part is when some scenes provide a visual representation of the imagination of the student and his teacher while they are both discussing the events in the writings. You will understand this when you see it and it is very well done.

The acting was acceptable. Since it is a French movie I didn't know any member of the cast, but they did their job well. I didn't notice any lack of skills whatsoever in the characters. It was a well-rounded job.

I understand why the movie was included in the mystery genre, I suppose there is a mystery in what might happen next but the mystery/suspense movies I tend to watch are very different. If I needed to recommend this movie to a group of people, I would say they need to enjoy the idea of exploring the imagination of an aspiring writer without any fantasy element, only drama and a bit of romance mixed with real events. If this sounds interesting then you might enjoy this movie.

The best

• Very original way of telling a story.
• Good plot and acting.

The worst

• It is not the type of mystery I was expecting.

More information: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/121875-dans-la-maison
Review: AAA
In numbers: 7/10