Miscellanous Outworlder Reviews

Beautiful Rambling

House of Voices
directed by Pascal Laugier
posted by Kattastrophe

 


Sometime after WW2, the Saint Ange orphanage is being decommissioned. Anna (Virginie Ledoyen) arrives to help clean the place up before... whatever's going to happen to it happens. As the final group of children are being shipped away, a girl breaks from the crowd and goes to Anna. She whispers in Anna's ear, "Beware the scary children". So, we're off to a good start.

I mean, "scary children"? Really? That's the best the girl could come up with? What about calling them "ghosts" or "demons" or any number of other names that kid stuck in a catholic orphanage could come up? When I was a kid I invented this race of zombie/body snatcher creatures and called them "Rice People". I know it's not a creepy name. It makes me giggle now. (Not really, they still scare the crap out of me, more than I can ever describe). But "scary children", though descriptive, is really not any less ridiculous.

Okay, that's a little petty. Honestly, the movie is beautiful. Stunning, in fact. The acting is top notch. I've discovered that I am in love with Lou Doillon. She played Judy, a mentally unstable orphan left at Saint Ange because no one wanted her. I always end up falling for the damaged ones.

Moving on, we are bewaring the scary children. After that Anna begins to hear strange noises in the house. She discovers that Judy was part of a shipment of children that, for the most part, went missing or died. Judy is the last one alive. There's also Helenka (Dorina Lazar), the cook. She cares for Judy and makes sure Judy takes her meds, of which there are many. So, they all stay and clean up the orphanage, except at one point it seems like cleaning isn't important anymore as everyone seems to stop. Anna finds some files in a garden storage and the Headmistress, played by former French scream queen Catriona MacColl, freaks out on her.

Then there's the cats. A mama cat and her litter live in an abandoned car. Judy likes to take care of them. And then Anna and Judy see Helenka drowning them. But they were already dead? That's about where the movie falls apart, IMO.

As amazing as the acting and visuals are, the story ends up going to crazyville as far as I can tell. I'm not saying I'm a rocket surgeon or anything, but I can usually summon up the brain power it takes to follow a storyline. I got all the way through Memento without too much trouble. I even think I understand most of Primer. But House of Voices completely fucking lost me. On Top of that, it's really, really long. Or, maybe it's not that it's too long, just paced badly. Oh, and there is almost no dialogue, so it was a bit easy for my mind to wander. There's a lot stuff that happens for no reason that I can find, though it might make more sense if I knew what happened at the end. Like the cats and the scars on Anna's back. Having Judy wear all white constantly seemed like a bit too much heavy handed symbolism, but that seems almost not worth mentioning.

So, while I think the set up is great, I can't rate it too highly based on the fact that I spent a couple hours online after seeing it looking for an explanation of the ending. No luck, BTW. If any of you out there know, please, share the love.

Gaming Inspiration
Atmosphere: Huge oppressive house in the middle of a beautifully smothering forest-- totally gothic horror. Unfortunately, it's not really anything you couldn't pick up from any other ghost story.

Theme: Seems to be something about not being able to save everyone. Anna demands to know what happened to the other children that were with Judy. Helenka explains that there were a lot of kids with the war and all. How many of them did she really expect them to be able to save?

Sanity vs. Insanity: At many points during the film, Anna is given the choice between allying with Helenka and her grounder view of the world or the childlike and clearly crazy Judy. Her choice affects the rest of the movie.

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