A film with a deep and profound symbology at its core.

"Film will only become an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper."-J Cocteau
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Ursula Meier's Home (2009) is a very well thought out, and very well executed film with much artistic merit.

It is also a very thought provoking film, rooted in the deep and profound symbology at its core. The house in an utterly isolated and desolate location, the once abandoned highway adjacent to it, the now opened highway adjacent to it, the once seemingly happy family, the now seemingly unhappy family, the attempts of the family to "protect" itself from the now opened highway, the "overly educated" middle child Marion, the "sunbathing" oldest child Judith finally abandoning the family, the radio station incessantly broadcasting traffic reports seemingly only about the highway adjacent to the house, and the casual nudity of all the family members except for the mother are just a few of all the interrelated symbolic elements present within a carefully constructed matrix. The interpretive unraveling of this integrated and complex symbology provides much potential fodder for intellectual and artistic analyses for the viewer inclined to traverse the paths of such reflective thinking.

Although the complete explication of all the possible interpretations of this very complex film could consume many pages of text, I would hint at some of the possible paths of interpretation that I myself would traverse by suggesting alternate suitable titles for this film. Such a list of alternate titles might include "The Womb", "The Refuge", "The Failed Escape", "A Prison Of Our Own Making", "The Dysfunctional Family In Disguise", "The Family Home As An Insane Asylum", "Let's Pretend It's Not Real" and "Let's All Pretend That Mommy's Not Crazy".

After viewing this film, a couple of lines of lyrics from an old Eagles song kept surfacing in my mind: "We live our lives in chains, Never knowing that we have the keys that can set us free".

Isabelle Huppert once again delivers an utterly brilliant performance, and once again of a mentally deranged woman of some type. Do these seemingly strange roles find her, or does she actively seek them out? Either way, Huppert obviously has the proclivity and the ability to portray very strange women indeed.

20 Stars !!!