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First of all, the description does not include the darker aspects of this film. Yes, it's in French, but the director is Swiss. There is a quality to this film that is definitely not French, and the director's background may explain it. Also, it was not filmed in France or Switzerland, but Bulgaria, so don't try to place the scenery into France. It looks a lot like southern California in a drought. I kept thinking, "This isn't France," and it was a little distracting to me but finally the action was even more distracting so I let that go.The nudity that many of the reviews mention is fairly normal for a European family (although less so over time). The young son is sharing a bath with his older stepsister. It is not sexual, and one gets the feeling that the whole family treats him as younger than he is chronologically. But this family has loose boundaries when it comes to bathing and sleeping together. Again this movie is very European and you need to understand that they are not Puritan about their bodies for the most part.I felt the opening scenes put us in a post-apocalyptic frame of mind. Where in the world are they? A deserted road? House in the middle of fields? No one else around? Yet the father does go to work, in a town somewhere (he wears a shirt with a name badge on it, so not a professional), and the 2 young kids go to school via a school bus, so there must be a life somewhere else. That science-fiction feeling never left, the whole movie has something strange and unpleasant throughout it. We kept waiting for a huge tragedy which never really arrived - even the sudden departure of the oldest daughter was not really treated as a tragedy but merely a puzzling event, more along the lines of "the postman didn't come today."Isabelle Huppert seems to like to play women with some quality of madness or dysfunction about them. She carries this role very well. The other actors are also solid in their roles. I cannot complain about the acting, although again, the script is bizarre in many places and this is NOT a realistic film. The characters do the best they can under the circumstances, trying to find solutions once the highway opens up, but their lives are increasingly limited until walling themselves into the house seems like a good idea. Won't spoil the ending but it won't stop you thinking about this family and their "home" once the credits roll.p.s. I changed my rating fron 3 stars to 4, because I can't get this movie out of my head. That, to me, means that it reached me on a deeper level than just an ordinary Hollywood-type of movie, and the more I think about it, the more questions I have. The acting was solid so I think it does merit 4 stars, although it was strange. I like strange films even if I struggle with them. YMMV.

Other reviews call this family "bizarre." I guess you could say that, but most often we refer to others as bizarre just because they are different from us. This family did live differently than most of us do. But different is OK. The thing that stood out to me at first was they are different because they are a very happy family, close knit. Most of us are busy with our routines and daily life and struggle to bond with those living in our home. (Spoiler alert). Though communal nudity is not my thing, I have known other families in my life where they believed being naked in front of other family members was normal to them, natural. I am personally not comfortable with that, but if that's their thing, OK.There was so much more going on in this movie than meets the eye. I think many viewers could not watch the movie simply because they could not connect to the situation. What I saw was a happy family, living in a peaceful place. The mother had previously struggled emotionally and had found her home in this out of the way location, an old motel by an old highway it looked like. The kids could live freely and not worry about dangers and influences, Then the worst happens. The highway reopens. Being a shortcut to two locations, traffic went nuts. Now, instead of being out away from everything, the world was literally in their lap. As others have pointed out, this illustrates how intrusive reality can be in our lives. It is difficult to find and maintain a peaceful existence in this life. The movie delves into how these changes have a profound affect on, not just our lives, but our minds.As things progress, you see what it is like to live in a home where there is mental illness and how that affects every member of the home. Watching this should give us empathy for the real life families who struggle with this debilitating health issue.And on a deeper level, there was the analogy that could be drawn by most any of us. When we are happy, life tends to not allow us to stay that way. We are bombarded on every side by things that steal our joy. And when something hurts us, we build walls around us to protect us and shut us safely away from those hurts. But as you can see through this film, that is not a healthy way to respond. And at some point, you need to break free of those walls, to move forward and find your way to a new life. We need to overcome or get away from the things that hurt us, but shutting ourselves away only harms us more.Overall, I really enjoyed the movie because I saw so many levels of things in the story. It was about far more than what you see at face value. It was deeper. It was about life's realities. About living with mental illness in the family. About emotional health. And about finding your happy place. Yes, having subtitles was inconvenient, but the story line allowed you to keep up. Yes, the family was different than many of us. But please remember it's OK to be different.

The story of a family living beside (and on) an unfinished expressway which is suddenly finished after 10 years uses some excellent actors to relate an uninspiring saga of helpless maladapted parents and their emotionally wounded children. Kept hoping for a sign of redemption or growth which never appeared. The oldest girl, given to ineffective but constant sunbathing, disappears with a passing motorist.Worried but transient attention is paid to her absence. The emotion engendered was simply worry about the children's safety, especially when the house is finally hermetically sealed against the noise, and the family becomes hypoxic. Their oldest daughter returns with a guy, fails to find an entrance, is bemused by the transformation, and leaves.

The French family was living kind of isolated near a highway. When the highway was built, it complicated things for them because of the noise.The father tried to get them out but the rest of the family refused to leave so he tried to block out the noise to the point where it was hard to breathe.When the daughter who had left tried to come back she could not go in because the door and windows had been blocked so she left again. At the end of the movie, the mother broke the blocks of cement and they left the house.

This is a bizarre little film of a family (a close family) , who have cobbled together a life for themselves out in the middle of nowhere. They are living their solitary life quite happily enough until the empty highway their little homestead sits next to, is suddenly, and quite noisily, finished and pressed into use. Life for the family begins to unravel and watching them, you begin to feel almost like a voyeur. Interesting, with some brief, non sexual nudity.

French/Swiss director Ursula Meier debut feature film has been described as a road movie in reverse. Home (2008) involves a family of five, mum and dad played by Isabelle Huppert and Oliver Gourmet and their three children who for ten years have incorporated an abandoned motorway as part of their front garden. They use it for late night roller hockey, a paddling pool and an armchair straddle's the lanes with the family satellite dish hooked up from the crash barrier in the centre reservation. Then suddenly the family's private existence is shattered when the motorway is finally opened. Eldest daughter Julien (Adelaide Leroux) escapes while the remaining family members descend into the type of madness similar to that portrayed in Polanski's Repulsion (1965). The movie is a metaphor for the horrors of the modern world and the sad decline of the family unit, displaying the way freedom can descend into a claustrophobic existence. Great acting from all involved in this original story with fantastic camerawork from famous French cinematographer Agnes Godard with her marvellous use of light and dark.

A frighteningly comic view of what happens when a family living next to an unfinished and abandoned motorway suddenly find the project taken up again.The noise, the traffic the sheer hell of trying to cross to the other side and the reactions of the various members of the family make this a film which tells us the futility of modern day living.

I thought it a good film and just goes to show what a person will go to protect his home and family.

An incoherent plot and good but not outstanding acting: quite watchable once, but not a must see..

Nice if odd film