Private Property(Nue propriété)

Name: Private Property
Genre: Drama

Belgium, France, Luxembourg · 2006
1h 35m
Director Joachim Lafosse
Starring Isabelle Huppert, Jérémie Renier, Yannick Renier, Patrick Descamps
Genre Drama

Since Luc granted a divorce to Pascale ten years ago, he paid generous alimony and left a fine country house as long as their twin sons remain at home. Pascale always acted as if she was the provider and head of the household, even now the inseparable brothers are twenty. But she started a secret affair with Flemish neighbor, cook Jan, whose ambition is to start a restaurant and B&B with her. As the boys learn she wants to cancel her job and sell the house for the project, college-man Thierry, who has a steady girl Anne, naturally refuses to let her spend dad's money meant for them. Gentler François, content to remain a handyman, would consider letting her and maybe working in the 'family business'. This causes trouble, even after Pascale moves out to Gerda's indefinitely, leading to tragedy.

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Chicago Tribune by

Lafosse's frustrating, yet beautifully elegiac coda emphasizes the point that his production and storytelling style have been making throughout: Private Property is about processes, not conclusions.

Chicago Reader by Andrea Gronvall

Isabelle Huppert gets a respite from her usual ice queen roles with this shattering psychological drama about the danger of children staying too long in the nest.

New York Daily News by Elizabeth Weitzman

The performances are impeccable, but while director Joachim Lafosse carefully creates an atmosphere of suffocating dread, he could have let a little more air into this simmering hothouse.

L.A. Weekly by Ella Taylor

Pascale is the movie’s most defined character, and its most repugnant. Whatever sympathy we can muster for her boils down to Huppert’s richly layered portrayal.

TV Guide Magazine by Maitland McDonagh

Lafosse's razor sharp dissection of relationships strained to the breaking point is hypnotic in a road-accident kind of way.

The New York Times by Manohla Dargis

Private Property embraces the banal and the monstrous, and affords Ms. Huppert opportunity to astonish rather than overwhelm.

Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert

What draws us into Private Property is how so many things happen under the surface, never commented upon.

The A.V. Club by Scott Tobias

Like many French films of its kind, Private Property remains content to simply observe a situation without tidying up the narrative, which in this case leaves some big questions unanswered. But Lafosse knows that problems that beg for a resolution sometimes don't get one.

New York Post by V.A. Musetto

Huppert is, as usual, superb, proving yet again that she is the finest actress working in France today.