I quite enjoyed the movie. Three things that were quite odd from an American point of view.
1. I don't think an American mother would ever take a shower with one of her grown sons in the room.
2. I don't think two grown up brothers would take a bath together in an American household.
3. Who irons teeshirts like the mother was doing in the movie?
Sometimes cultural things can throw you. When I first saw the mom showering in front of her son I didn't know if it was just a cultural thing or suppose to be indicative of something darker, which it would be for an American film.
shareWe Americans are so puritanistic. With the prospect of a severe clean water shortage looming, we should get used to the idea of the whole family bathing together in the same wash tub on the kitchen floor.
It may also be indicative that she still thinks of them as children, and they respond childishly (or vice versa).
shareI'm French, I have two sons and a daughter. I wouldn't take a shower in front on my sons unless I really had to. And my two sons don't take their bath together, well at least not since they were 8 years old. It's not a cultural thing at all. I'm French, certainly not puritan, but I find this very awkward.
sharephew!!! not just me then.
shareI couldn't help but notice all the scenes mentioned. Especially the sons bathing. Quite odd, indeed... Great movie though
shareAren't we supposed to read all of these incidents as examples of badly eroded "boundaries" in this family?* I think any audience is supposed to read this behavior as at least strange, if not inappropriate. Not just the puritans. And it is forced in our faces, considering that the lingerie/"am I fat?"/"you look like a whore" scene is the opening sequence of the film.
*Well, except for the ironing scene. (I have friends who iron everything, including tshirts. Yes, it is weird.)
last 2 dvds: Red Without Blue (2007) & The Woman in the Window (1944)
mnoe has it exactly right - this inappropriate lack of boundaries, of privacy, runs throughout the whole film. The title itself, Nue propriete, which idiomatically does translate as "Private Property" in a legal sense regarding real estate, is actually a multi-layered ironic pun once you look at the words individually.
shareI was jarred by it at first and then I realized how much the sons acted like children. I think those scenes reinforce how young they act. Does anyone know how old they are supposed to be?
shareIn fact, "nue-propriété" is a legal term which doesn't translate as "private property" but rather as "ownership without usufruct". It describes a situation where somebody owns a property while somebody else has the right to live in it. There is also a pun because "nu(e)" means "naked" in French, so word for word, "nue propriété" means "naked property".
shareSorry, you don't have to have an American point of view to think these scenes are odd. Being Belgian myself, just like the characters in the movie, I can assure you nobody brushed their teeth while their mother is taking a shower right next to them and no grown-up brothers would ever take a bath together!
On the other hand, yes, Belgian moms o iron teeshirts! :)
Yes, Belgian moms iron teeshirts.
But I completely agree, brothers don't take a bath together at this age here...
I think Joachim Lafosse filmed the bathroom scenes with things like that to show us how complex the situation is in this family, with paradoxal relations.
I agree about the brothers taking a bath together, but about the mother showering and the son brushing his teeth, it does seem a little surprising to me, but not that much.
I am French, I've been raised in a farm and sometimes my mother enter the bathroom to take sth while me or my brother is showering. I think it's a rural thing, cause running water arrived "late" in the countryside and a certain "lack of prudishness" remained.
That's because, due to Americans Puritanical ideology, they somehow equate nudity with sex and, for that reason, they believe that showering with their child, regardless of their age, is somehow incestuous. It's completely ridiculous.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_qMpoKh3pU Old lady wheelchair chicken challenge!
I an French as one of the posters and everything this family does is very awkward for me. First, my sons would never talk to me like the sons do in the movie and I certainly wouldn't ask them about my underwear (at the beginning of the movie); the other things are Pascale, the mother's point of view, because I would never (same for the other moms I know) take a shower with my sons or my daughter in the bathroom... even when they were little, nor would my children take their bath together (they just did it a few times when they were very very little). Plus I don't iron t-shirts as many other things... So what we see in the movie isn't a cultural thing special to European households, I think, Pascale wants to consider her boys as children, that's it.
The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common. R.W.Emerson