NP is about the rampant alienation in modern Capitalist Western society, and the gradual destruction of the once-compact family unit, through greed, materialism, and loss of spirituality. It's a heart-felt, and indeed heart-wrenching, look at the struggles involved in late adolescence on one hand, and the sense of disorientation of a middle-aged cow, on the other. Furthermore, the concept of the-
Just kidding...
Yes, this is a French movie in more ways than one.
Nuage Proprietage is basically just a relatively dull, quite pointless family drama, and yet from the start it is chock-full of little kinky surprises: perversions that we're so accustomed to seeing from Euro-trash directors these days. Huppert is taking a shower, while one of her twin sons is peeing, standing only a meter away from her. I half-expected them to have sex (knowing full-well that incest and/or sodomy and/or bestiality have odds at around 50-50 of occurring in any given European movie - even more so when it's held in high esteem by Les Critiques Filmeaux), turning NP into yet another excuse for taboo-breaking hence "artistic" cinema.
But no, there is no incestual theme here. I guess perhaps the French do this sort of thing on a regular basis: parents and their kids being naked together in the john... A little later on, incest-fans/perverts among the cinema-goers are given a glimmer of yet more hope when Isabelle's male twins bathe together in a very very small bathtub. Did I mention they're 18 years old? No, no, no, ye fans of sexploitation trash cinema, don't get yer hopes up; the siblings do not - thankfully(!!!!) - have sex with each other. Believe it or not, they are not even (physically) attracted to each other, and at least one half of the twinic duo is straight.
We find out about the blond twin's heterosexuality through a number of scenes in which he has sex with his pretty girlfriend. I mean, show me good female nudity any time you like, but is there any purpose to these scenes? No. Does it matter to the further plot developments that at least one of the twins likes girls? No. Would the blond twin act any different toward his mother's plans to sell their house if hadn't had a girlfriend? Probably not. (If anything, being sexually unsaturated he'd be even more aggressive against her selling it.) And yet what French movie would be complete without pointless sex scenes? European filmmakers never forget that most critics who write about their precious movies are sex-starved aging nerds, hence once you've titillated them, you assure yourself at least a solid rating.
The bizarre nude scenes are just the top of the Pointlessness Pyramid. There is a plethora of scenes that mean absolutely nothing, add nothing to the story, etc. Their only purpose is PADDING. Fill the time somehow because the story is so thin; so basic it would not suffice for a half-hour TV drama, if left to stand on its own, without the silent, pretentious pauses in the plot. Cleverly enough, every brainwashed/lobotomized film student has been indoctrinated to tell you that these pointless scenes are supposed to "aid character development". Yeah, a woman walking on grass for 10 minutes definitely tells me everything about the character... (That she's a cow?...) In fact, padding tells a lot more about the director's pretentious cluelessness than any character here.
WHO CARES about a scene in which the twins wrestle, this allegedly showing us that they're "still immature" (as one reviewer put it)? A skillful director/writer does not require a dozen one-minute scenes to describe a character: he can do it in 2 minutes, and if he's really ingenious/inventive he can describe a character sufficiently in even less than that.
Remember: so-called "character development" is just another term for "wasting the viewer's precious(?) time". Besides, none of the movie's basic six characters are interesting enough to deserve so much "in-depth" portrayal. These people are neither interesting or weird enough to warrant that kind of effort or time.
When you strip away all the BS and take a hard - (and slightly bored) - look at the basics of NP, you must realize that you're dealing with a rather trite plot of whether a woman will sell her house or not! WHO CARES! If I wanted to experience the thrill of watching people decide whether and how to sell their homes I'd have gone into real estate.
The ending is as pointless as the basic premise: the blond twin injures the other twin. The love is now gone from the family, the twins' innocence is lost, everyone is emotionally devastated, and allegedly all of this is the blond twin's fault because he was trying to prevent his mother from taking their house away... So very deep.
I really like Isabelle Huppert. However, in her later years she has narrowed down her acting technique to giving us the same grumpy poker-face (sounds like an oxymoron, I know) - in almost every single scene. I doubt that she's even capable of playing sympathetic characters anymore. She's starting to display the non-range of Katherine Deneuve, the worst French actress of all time.
Just kidding...
Yes, this is a French movie in more ways than one.
Nuage Proprietage is basically just a relatively dull, quite pointless family drama, and yet from the start it is chock-full of little kinky surprises: perversions that we're so accustomed to seeing from Euro-trash directors these days. Huppert is taking a shower, while one of her twin sons is peeing, standing only a meter away from her. I half-expected them to have sex (knowing full-well that incest and/or sodomy and/or bestiality have odds at around 50-50 of occurring in any given European movie - even more so when it's held in high esteem by Les Critiques Filmeaux), turning NP into yet another excuse for taboo-breaking hence "artistic" cinema.
But no, there is no incestual theme here. I guess perhaps the French do this sort of thing on a regular basis: parents and their kids being naked together in the john... A little later on, incest-fans/perverts among the cinema-goers are given a glimmer of yet more hope when Isabelle's male twins bathe together in a very very small bathtub. Did I mention they're 18 years old? No, no, no, ye fans of sexploitation trash cinema, don't get yer hopes up; the siblings do not - thankfully(!!!!) - have sex with each other. Believe it or not, they are not even (physically) attracted to each other, and at least one half of the twinic duo is straight.
We find out about the blond twin's heterosexuality through a number of scenes in which he has sex with his pretty girlfriend. I mean, show me good female nudity any time you like, but is there any purpose to these scenes? No. Does it matter to the further plot developments that at least one of the twins likes girls? No. Would the blond twin act any different toward his mother's plans to sell their house if hadn't had a girlfriend? Probably not. (If anything, being sexually unsaturated he'd be even more aggressive against her selling it.) And yet what French movie would be complete without pointless sex scenes? European filmmakers never forget that most critics who write about their precious movies are sex-starved aging nerds, hence once you've titillated them, you assure yourself at least a solid rating.
The bizarre nude scenes are just the top of the Pointlessness Pyramid. There is a plethora of scenes that mean absolutely nothing, add nothing to the story, etc. Their only purpose is PADDING. Fill the time somehow because the story is so thin; so basic it would not suffice for a half-hour TV drama, if left to stand on its own, without the silent, pretentious pauses in the plot. Cleverly enough, every brainwashed/lobotomized film student has been indoctrinated to tell you that these pointless scenes are supposed to "aid character development". Yeah, a woman walking on grass for 10 minutes definitely tells me everything about the character... (That she's a cow?...) In fact, padding tells a lot more about the director's pretentious cluelessness than any character here.
WHO CARES about a scene in which the twins wrestle, this allegedly showing us that they're "still immature" (as one reviewer put it)? A skillful director/writer does not require a dozen one-minute scenes to describe a character: he can do it in 2 minutes, and if he's really ingenious/inventive he can describe a character sufficiently in even less than that.
Remember: so-called "character development" is just another term for "wasting the viewer's precious(?) time". Besides, none of the movie's basic six characters are interesting enough to deserve so much "in-depth" portrayal. These people are neither interesting or weird enough to warrant that kind of effort or time.
When you strip away all the BS and take a hard - (and slightly bored) - look at the basics of NP, you must realize that you're dealing with a rather trite plot of whether a woman will sell her house or not! WHO CARES! If I wanted to experience the thrill of watching people decide whether and how to sell their homes I'd have gone into real estate.
The ending is as pointless as the basic premise: the blond twin injures the other twin. The love is now gone from the family, the twins' innocence is lost, everyone is emotionally devastated, and allegedly all of this is the blond twin's fault because he was trying to prevent his mother from taking their house away... So very deep.
I really like Isabelle Huppert. However, in her later years she has narrowed down her acting technique to giving us the same grumpy poker-face (sounds like an oxymoron, I know) - in almost every single scene. I doubt that she's even capable of playing sympathetic characters anymore. She's starting to display the non-range of Katherine Deneuve, the worst French actress of all time.