This first feature by Franco-Swiss director Ursula Meier is a slightly humorous, almost surreal film of a family whose contented existence turns to hell.
At first the family – mother Marthe (Isabelle Huppert), husband Michel (Olivier Gourmet), older daughter Judith (Adelaïde Lennoix), younger daughter Marion (Madeleine Budd) and son Julien (Kacey Mottet Klein) – are in a strange but healthy environment: they are in an isolated house in the countryside next to a disused road. Olivier goes to work in his car, Marthe is the housewife, the younger kids walk to school across the fields, and Judith just listens to music on the radio in a deckchair with a bikini on.
And then they learn from the radio that the road is being re-tarmacked in preparation for a new incarnation. Their life of hell begins as heavy traffic comes and the noise is unbearable. During an accident there is a traffic jam, with stationary motorists ogling Judith and leaving a pile of litter on their doorstep.
Their reactions are different, as is their attitude to the health hazard of the pollution. Judith leaves, they argue, and then Michel has the crazy idea of shutting out the noise by clothing the house in fibreglass insulation and breezeblocks. This may make the house quiet, but it doesn't make for good breathing. The only option is to walk away.
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