Nue propriété is a French film first released in 2006, directed by Joachim Lafosse.  The film stars Isabelle Huppert, Jérémie Renier, Yannick Renier, Kris Cuppens and Patrick Descamps.  It has also been released under the title: Private Property.  Our overall rating for this film is: very good.


François and Thierry are twin brothers who live with their mother, Pascale, in a large house in the country.  Tensions between the adolescent siblings and their mother are heightened by the latter’s refusal to have anything to do with her ex-husband, who abandoned her some years ago to start a family with another woman.  Encouraged by her new lover, Jan, Pascale decides to sell the family home and open a guesthouse in the Alps.  When her sons hear of this, they are outraged, and the relationship between the three family members takes a dramatic turn for the worse...

Having won acclaim for his first two full-length films – Folie privée (2004) and Ça rend heureux (2006) - Belgian director Joachim Lafosse continued to pick up plaudits by the bucket load with his third feature, a brooding portrait of a dysfunctional family that has a darkly Brechtian feel to it.  The main characters in the drama – a single mother and her two sons – are trapped in a web of mutual dependency that ultimately drives them into bitter conflict, with devastating consequences.  

Despite the film’s stark minimalist style and the apparent simplicity of the story it has to tell, Nue propriété is a profoundly intense work that explores the complex and fraught relationship between a mother and her teenage sons with a rare lucidity and sincerity.

Convincing performances from a highly talented cast (including Jérémie Rénier and Isabelle Huppert at their best) - bring an uncompromising realism which, along with some unsettlingly voyeuristic camera work, make this feel more like a fly-on-the-wall documentary than a drama.  This is an arresting and original film, crafted with maturity and insight, and suffused with pathos, poetry and some very disturbing undercurrents.

© James Travers 2009

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