Private Property
by Joachim Lafosse
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DVD Cover Information
Actor:  Jérémie Renier and Yannick Renier Isabelle HuppertDirector: Joachim Lafosse
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); French (Original Language); French (Dubbed)
Format: Anamorphic, Color, NTSC, Surround Sound
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 89 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-09-11
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: New Yorker Video
Movie Reviews of Private Property
Movie Review: A Long Day's Journey Into The Next Day
Summary: 5 Stars
This film presents this premise:
We choose many of our confinements.
Modern men and women have amazingly broad discretion to choose how we confine ourselves.
We choose the conditions under which we live.
The film starts off with a brief phrase, written in white against the black screen:
"A nos limites."
Translated: "To our boundaries."
The first scene is of a middle aged mother looking in the mirror at her shape in a new camisole. She is assessing if she is still visually attractive. We don't know it yet, but she is also asking herself if she should attempt a new path into a new relationship.
She is a single mother raising her two sons, who are now both young adults, but still live in the house they grew up in. Their father, who lost the house in the divorce settlement, and who always hoped the house would go to the boys, still lives in the same city and stops by occasionally to give the boys money.
Neither son pursues work, and both depend completely on their parents for financial support.
As the plot progresses, the conflicts of interest increase between the sons, who wish to stay and live an easy life in their parents' home, and their mother who would like to sell the home and go off to start a new life running a bed & breakfast.
Eventually, the mother receives more abuse from her sons than she can bear, so she leaves them in the house alone to live with each other.
The movie explores this question: What environments do your actions create for the people who live with you and depend on you?
I titled this review after O'Neill's famous play because of the movie's candid scenes of brutal verbal family fights. This film is focused on the question of: How do our actions of today effect the reality of our tomorrow? If we keep in the same patterns, will similar reality continue around us? This film is about real life and the cycles of daily life.
The sons become excessively inconsiderate and selfish, and in doing so, constrain their mother terribly, to the point she abandons them to fend for themselves. She can no longer carry them and live happily.
The movie suggests how we treat our "enemies," the people with whom we have strong conflicts of interest, probably says as much or more about us as how we treat the people we care about and with whom we are not in conflict. If you want to know someone more fully, investigate how they have treated their enemies and the people from their previous relationships.
The mother tries to venture off into a new life with a new love, but feels dutifully obligated to take care of her dysfunctional sons. She falls in love with a local chef who lives next door. Maybe more accurately, she falls in love with the world the chef creates with her when they are in each other's company. When we stay in a love relationship with someone, the love is not simply about how we interact and are drawn to the other person. Over time, the love thrives because we fall in love with the environments we create in each other's homes, activities, and social circles. We don't just fall in love with the person, we fall in love with the world they've created around them in the company of their familiars.
But the mother's new lover cannot abide the short-sightedness of her sons, and he chooses to step away until she deals with their behaviors.
I won't give away the final plot events, except to say the insensitivity and poor conflict-resolution-methods of the sons lead to a tragedy. The filmmakers intentionally do not define the tragic results, leaving the viewer with the intended question of:
Would would be worse? Would it be worse if the daily patterns and environments you create led to great harm of someone close to you? Or would it be worse if your actions effectively paralyzed others you depend on, limiting what they could do? How might your responses to conflict harm or limit the people closest to you?
The film is an exploration of boundaries, limits, and confinements.
Our lives are not determined by whether we "exceed" our limits or "stay within" our limits.
Our lives are determined by what we do with the limits we have, the limits we create, and the limits we choose.
Life is not limitless. There are many boundaries to many things. Some are chosen for us. Many we choose ourselves.
We are defined by what we do with the many limits surrounding us.
Those decisions determine the breadth and environments of our privately selected properties.
This is an excellent film, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.
Summary of Private Property
Has the pulse of an emotional thriller.---Manohla Dargis, NEW YORK TIMES
Pascale (Isabelle Huppert) lives with her adult twin sons, aimless François (Yannick Renier) and headstrong Thierry (Jérémie Renier, star of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's L'ENFANT and LA PROMESSE), in a renovated Belgian farmhouse. Each is still reeling from the divorce that divided the family some years earlier. Both boys pursue their respective interests, but neither seems compelled to embrace adulthood or the responsibilities that come with it. However, all that is about to change. Pascale has fallen in love again and dreams of a new life for herself and her lover a countryside B&B that they aspire to own together. But what would seem to be a happy time in her life takes a turn for the worse as she finds herself unable to rise from the shadow of her ex-husband and selfish children. In a bid for survival, Pascale leaves the house in the hands of Thierry and François, never suspecting that in her absence, long-buried resentment and rivalry will boil over, igniting a war between the brothers.
DVD Details: Belgium/France/Luxembourg, 2006, 89 minutes, Color, Region 1, NTSC, Dolby Digital Stereo 2.0 or 5.1 Surround Sound; In French with English subtitles; Special Features: Theatrical trailer; Enhanced for 16x9 TVs; Scene Selections; Liner Notes: Production notes and Interview with the director.
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