Film Review--Sitcom

Over the centuries, the French have cornered the market on social and sexual transgression, from Baudelaire to Bataille to de Sade to Vadim. And, now, in modern French film, Catherine Breillat and Francois Ozon have taken these reins to a greater or lesser degree. While it pleases me that a female director has gone this route, its unfortunate that Breillat's films are as amateurish and annoying as they are. Francois Ozon, on the other hand, in a world that grows increasingly puritan and conservative, has made a sincere attempt to extend the art in the modern day. His films are crisp, clean, and professional, but also subersive and joyously transgressive, just on the cusp of the mainstream, right in the place where the public can view and be offended (this is not Nick Zedd's War is Menstrual Envy, a fine low-budget film in its own right and a fantastic title, but unseen and, therefore, pointless to its own ends).

Sitcom, in many ways a pure comedy, stands as an excellent example of Ozon's transgressive esthetic. Starring art-film regulars and sporting high production values, he tells the story of a father who brings a little white rat home one day into his less-than-emotional nuclear family that sends their world asunder. Each person who comes in direct contact with the animal changes (from a perspective, for the better) and gains a new sense for the sexual and the violent that manifests itself in varying ways, from incest to bestiality to suicide to murder. The amount of offensiveness is staggering (consider that the actors that play the brother and sister are siblings in reality). The difference here, however, from other films of its ilk, is that there is good comic timing, quality performances, and a point. The key is the ambiguous rat (much like the visitor in Pasolini's Teorema), which can and does symbolize any number of liberations, and is never explained, even in the absurdist, Kafka-esque ending that finally allows the family to come together in an emotional way that was never previously accessible to them.

This kind of depth is unavailable in so many like-minded films and is present in his entire vision, whether it's the innocuous mystery of Swimming Pool, the sexual role-play of Water Drops on Burning Rocks, or the horrific sadness of See the Sea. Where directors like John Waters use transgression in a "see what I can do" kind of sense, Ozon actually cares about his audience and their emotions. It is certainly a rarity in this kind of endeavor and, best of all, Ozon's only 39, and has a whole life of transgression left to explore.