One sign that a film has failed to hook and hold the viewer is if 'awkward' questions keep niggling away as you watch and prevent you from surrendering to whatever charm or other qualities it may possess. Or, to put it another way, sloppy writing. Let me show you what I mean. Scene #1. Two guys are talking more awkwardly than easily. One, a rugged, truckdriver type the other a handsome actor type. They both appear to be in their thirties but the truckdriver looks about ten years older than the actor. It gradually emerges that the actor fathered a child some years ago, the child is handicapped in some way and the truckdriver and (presumably) his wife have raised him as their own but now the truckdriver is turning him over to the actor, perhaps by mutual consent, perhaps reluctantly, it is never explained. We assume that the actor abandoned the mother sometime before the birth and that the truckdriver then married her or, alternatively the truckdriver is the brother of the abandoned mother and has brought up the child with his own wife so that the child has had access to neither biological parent. Cut to a train en route to Berlin where the boy will undergo tests/treatment at a clinic specialising in disablement. The actor keeps losing the boy; first on the train, a sleeper, he wakes up to find the boy in the dining car, next, at the hospital itself, whilst the actor is talking the boy slips away and explores other areas. Finally and most serious of all the boy disappears from a sports stadium, takes a tram and winds up in the depot, the last passenger. Incredibly, having realised the boy is lost the actor chooses this moment to reveal his back story to Charlotte Rampling rather than search for a severely handicapped boy who is alone in a strange city. But long before this point other questions have surfaced: Where, for instance, does the actor/father get the money to 1)travel to Berlin, 2)take an expensive-looking suite at a hotel, 3)presumably pay for his son to have treatment plus a room in the hospital, 4) hire a car and drive to Norway. Apart from the money aspect what about the TIME he is spending away from his family and his job. At one point fairly early on he tells his son that he works with white goods - refrigerators, cookers, etc - making sure they work, which sounds like a repairman. He also reveals that he has a wife and an infant which begs the question how does his wife - possibly several years younger given she has had a child of her own less than a year ago - feel about taking on a fifteen year old handicapped boy, this is important because towards the end of the film the father asks the boy to come and live with him. The film leaves you strangely unmoved, verging on indifferent or, as a good friend of mine might put it, refusing to be manipulated. It misses the 'heart' of the similar movie The Eighth Day by a mile. Non-actress Charlotte Rampling has little to do but look noble, which is just as well, in a role that could be played by any semi-competent actress. Similarly Kim Rossi Stuart has little to do but look handsome and slightly bemused. Apparently they made a lot of fuss about this one at Venice and whilst I can't quite see why I do concede that it was better than Vera Drake - which apparently beat it out of first prize - but then how hard is that.
Review of The Keys to the House
