Film Review: Home

Home - Directed by Ursala Meier (French – subtitles)

Marthe and Michel’s family of five live off a highway. Not one that tails away from a slip road – there is little space between their house and the road. As the road has been un-used for some years, this hasn’t been a problem. The road becomes an extension of their life as the space is utilised for various sports, games and leisure activities that indulge the free spirits of this family when they’re not at work or school. Yet there is always the creeping spectre of their lifestyle being rudely shattered with the motorway once again set to host traffic. Reports of work lorries, some way down the road, are wearily investigated and a local roads based station ‘Radio Highway’ becomes a harbinger of doom when it anticipates, in excited tones, the re-opening of the motorway.

If Radio Highway’s voice reeks of propaganda on behalf of the petrol heads, the element of ‘occupation’ is suggested by the appearance of road workers, all orange nylon work trousers and heavy boots, who descend to erect road guards and dispassionately move anything on the road owned by the family.

Up to this point we have seen a happy go lucky family living in their own idyll but with the onset of traffic and noise pollution, characteristics of the family give out and eccentricites are exposed. One of the daughters Judith, a stoic, thrash metal listener who seems to predominately sun bathe elicits honks from passing motorists. The family begin to get viewed with freakish curiosity. Cracks open up. Basic things like setting off to work or school become fraught operations.

Michel’s temperament often threatens to boil over in these circumstances so when he bursts in on the bedroom of a now communally huddled up family to declare ‘It’s over’, things take a darker turn into a living entombment. This is an original ‘anti-road movie’ film on what happens to a family when the outside world starts to unwelcomingly encroach on a family’s space.

Phantom Band 7th November 2009

Having arrived at Salford's Islington Mill by way of asking directions I was glad to find that Marple’s Dutch Uncles were the support band. I had seen them last year, also in a support role, and found their spidery guitar tunes all contained within a pop framework very enjoyable. The band are young, their stage manner bouncy and fittingly, inside what was an old cotton mill, their clothes carried a radiant hue.

The Phantom Band appearance is more inscrutable by contrast with some of their hooded attire extending to spangly, sequined robes although singer Rick is unfrocked.

In contrast to the Dutch Uncles elasticity they positively take their music on an exploratory loop for minutes at a time before morphing into something else, feathered along with various pipes or percussion instruments. The more conventionally structured songs such as Island (whose preliminary strums enticingly recall Silent Night) are delivered with such echoey precision as to make them sound other-worldy. It would be a challenge to see the songs of such length hold the audience’s attentions but there’s enough in the likes of the Howling and the Doorsy Throwing Bones to pick up the pace. I left after their main set to catch the bus home seven miles away but they were to come back and played two encores.

I was unaware of this venue which has already been active for several years. This looks a fine place with other floors given over to artistic ventures. The open plan is all it had in common with the loft apartments that often arise from such unoccupied buildings. After lying derelict in urban Salford the Mill has been re-opened.

Photo by Simon