For me, the underage nudity, in fact the casual nudity of the whole family, except for mother Marthe, is a "clue", a symbol of the true sickness underlying the "Happy Family" façade of the first half of the film.
The "sick" angle of the nudity in this film was brought home to me by the scene in the first "Happy Family" part where the naked adult daughter Judith is shown in the bathtub with her naked, grade school age brother Julien, with mother Marthe standing by seemingly assenting to such a scene. I don't care how "liberal", or "free thinking" you are, or whether you live in France, or the USA, or in Timbuktu, this is undoubtedly a "sick" scene, not only because it inappropriately juxtaposes a nude female adult with a nude male child, but, because these two are siblings, it is also clearly suggestive of incestuous relations in this family.
That said, how does this clearly inappropriate adult-child, brother-sister nude scene in the first half of the film fit in with the seemingly "Happy Family", "Normal Family" portrait that is also displayed in the first half of this film? For me, it clearly does not. The casual nudity of this family, and particularly the nude bathtub scene between Judith and Julien, is presented in such a way as to create a real paradox in an otherwise seemingly "normal" family façade. But that's just the very point that I think the screenwriter is trying to make here, that this is NOT a "normal", "happy" family. It is a family with some really heavy issues, heavy issues that are brought out into the open when the highway is opened. This is just a family that is accustomed to "put up a good front" not only to the rest of the world, but to each other as well, so that they don't need to confront the latent sick, dysfunctional dynamic that existed in this family well before the narrative in this film even started.
The casual family nudity, even including the father Michel in a couple of scenes, is in sharp contrast to the mother, who is NEVER shown exposed at all in the film. What can this possibly mean? For me, it suggests a sharp boundary of intimacy between the mother Marthe, and the rest of the family. This boundary reinforces the subtle mental illness of Marthe that is submerged beneath her "good, normal mother" façade. She can't get naked with the rest of the family because she has something to "hide'", something that she dare not openly "bare" to the rest of the family, namely that she is really crazy beneath her "normal mother" façade. The latent "sickness", the latent "craziness" of Marthe is fully, and dramatically exposed after the highway is opened, when she insanely resists her husband's rational attempt to move his family out of clearly unhealthy situation, when she physically fights her husband, and clings to pieces of furniture, screaming all the while, insanely resisting Michel's attempts to physically remove her from the house.
Besides the excessive underage nudity in the film, there are other "clues" that this is, in reality, a rather sick, and dysfunctional family. The very location of their home is one such clue. Although the isolation of the house suggests a pastoral, rural appearance, the extremity of its isolation , not to mention the fact that it weirdly sits at the edge of an abandoned highway suggests that this is a very strange family indeed, superficial appearances aside. The fact that there seems to be no other route to the house except through an informal dirt path through an open field further suggests that this family need for seclusion is somewhat less than "normal" Not only is this house seemingly lacking neighbors at any distance, but this self imposed isolation of the family is in conjunction with the fact that none of them, except for the youngest child Julien, is shown to have any contact with the outside world, save absolutely necessary contact such as work, school, shopping, and such. In fact, the mother Marthe, who is the psychological lynchpin in this sick, though submerged, family dynamic is NEVER shown to have social contact outside the family, even having daughter Marion, and husband Michel do the grocery shopping.
In this context, the outward confusion and the outward horror that emerges in the life of this family after the highway opens is not so much "caused" by the opening of the highway, as much as the opening of the highway creates a set of circumstances that allowed the submerged sickness already in the family dynamic to surface. The opening of the highway in this family's life not only brought physical discomforts, but it also symbolically brought the social contact that they so carefully long avoided in their once isolated home.
Overall, I myself, as a film fanatic feel that gratuitous sexuality of ANY sort, underage or otherwise, has no place in a serious theatrical film. There is way too much of it not only in French films, but in big studio Hollywood films as well. There are just too many films where the sexuality doesn't necessarily further the storyline whatsoever, and seems to be there only to vicariously titillate those viewers who are so inclined. However, in Home (2008), I really do not see any such gratuitous sexuality at all. As apparently offensive as the brother-sister nude bathtub scene is in particular, and all the nudity in film is in general, It is strategically, and thoughtfully placed in the storyline to subtly reveal the profound dysfunction that lies hidden beneath the otherwise "normal", "happy" façade of this decidedly strange family.
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