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This starts off like a comedy, but you couldn't fool me, Isabelle Huppert's in it.
What an utterly original film. A family of 5, living an idyllic life near an abandoned highway project in the middle of nowhere for ten years, wake up one morning to find the highway has been completed, and they're suddenly awash in cars and danger. They cope for a while, but slowly, the relentless traffic, pollution, noise and rubbernecking drivers push everyone to their breaking point.
Everyone involved is fantastic (and Huppert is Huppert. No one breaks down on camera -- and seemingly in a different way, every film -- like she can), but I want to especially shout out the sound engineers. Their work is spectacular here.
Noise is a busy character in this film, as important and present as any of the people. Noise sits like greasy water on everyone's skin, like exhaust in their lungs, like a cloud keeping everyone from seeing each other. This is a movie about the invasiveness of noise and the importance of space, and when things finally get quiet in the last half hour, it's almost vertigo-inducing.
So I'm going to sleep tonight, thankful that I don't live in a concrete bunker beside a highway, and making a special individual note of every sound I can possibly hear, no matter how small or insignificant.