Sitcom (1998)
Directed by François Ozon

Film Review

Having made a dozen or so controversial and often hugely imaginative short and medium-length films, François Ozon achieved widespread fame and notoriety with his first full-length film, Sitcom in 1998.  Since, the young director (barely into his thirties) has quickly acquired a reputation as one of the most radical but exciting new talents in French cinema, winning critical acclaim for his film eye-opening 2000 film Sous la sable.

Sitcom is certainly less polished and satisfying than some of Ozon's subsequent films, and most spectators will find the jet black comedy (involving almost every permutation of sexual perversion, including bestiality) to be in extreme bad taste.  In spite of this, it is an extremely entertaining film in places, with some moments of unbridled and genuine hilarity, yet at the same time it has an intellectual appeal which other intentionally "sick" comedies lack.   Ozon has clearly been greatly influenced by the work of Luis Buñuel, the Spanish master of film surrealism, since he freely adopts some of Buñuel's techniques (such as the merging of reality and dreams), often to great effect.

The film is as much a satire on the trite formula of television sitcoms, with their predictable characters and nauseatingly cosy atmosphere, as on French bourgeois life.   Comedy at the expense of the middle classes is hardly a recent feature of French cinema - examples of the genre can be traced back to the origins of cinema itself, and some of the world's greatest directors (Buñuel most obviously) have made a career knocking wind out of the sails of the Bourgeoisie.  What is new, and more exciting, is that Ozon adopts the sitcom format for his film and then breaks all of the rules (plus a few others), the result being the total opposite of a cosy family teatime comedy.

The main reason why Sitcom works as well as it does is because of its unpredictability and its novelty value.  For this reason, it has to be a one-off, and even by the end of this film Ozon is having to resort to more and more extreme (and increasingly surreal) plot developments to prevent the film from sagging.

Ozon should be commended on the originality of his script and, more crucially, on his ability to make the best out of his limited resources.  Sitcom is a very low budget film by today's standards, but that is scarcely noticeable, or important;  indeed it is only really apparent at the end of the film, when's Ozon's ambitions for an explosive finale overtake his directoral judgement.

Sitcom may not be a faultless piece of cinema, but it is relentlessly funny, daringly original, shockingly stylish and terrifyingly unpredictable.

Film Synopsis

Once upon a time there was a respectable bourgeois family, living a harmonious and respectable bourgeois life in a typically respectable bourgeois house.  Then, one day, the father Jean brings home a white lab rat in a cage and this cosy respectable bourgeois world suddenly begins to change into something very different.  It starts with Hélène, the mother, hosting an impromptu party with her Spanish housemaid Maria and her Cameroonian husband Abdu.  It is then that the son Nicolas, hitherto a studious law student, comes out and says he is gay.

The obliging Abdu offers to talk the matter over with Nicholas, but ends up giving the confused youngster a graphic lesson in sex education he is unlikely to forget.  Unable to endure her boyfriend David's coolness towards her any longer, the daughter Sophie, an aspiring artist, then decides to commit suicide, by throwing herself from an upstairs window.  Luckily, she survives the attempt and ends up being crippled for life.

The weeks pass, and things only become weirder for the members of this once perfectly respectable household.  Sophie combats her ennui by subjecting her boyfriend to sadomasochistic sessions, whilst her brother, now a fully fledged homosexual, indulges in group sex in his bedroom.  Gradually, it becomes apparent to the household that the mysterious white rat is the cause of all these strange developments.  It seems to have completely transformed everyone in the house except the father, but he is about to undergo the most dramatic change of all, when he cooks the mouse and eats it...