House of D

Tom Warshaw lives in Paris as a painter. His son is turning thirteen and Tom decides to describe his own thirteenth year. New York, the seventies. His father is dead, his mother is holding herself up on pills, and the boy cannot manage at school. His only friend is Pappass, who works as a janitor there; he has a learning disability, is older, and the two spend their time together. There is a women's prison on the street and he talks with a woman who shouts from a window. He never sees her. That year something happens and Tom leaves the city. David Duchovny writes and directs, and appears in the film. Anton Yelchin plays the young Tom, Robin Williams plays Pappass and Téa Leoni his mother. It is Duchovny's first work as a director. It was badly received on release and most of the criticism was about the excess of its emotional register. The matter the narrative builds is guilt; the narrator feels responsible for something that year and the film keeps it until the end. Anton Yelchin's playing is what was most praised. The prison is the symbolic centre and the conversations with the woman are the film's best sections. Its limit is structure; the narrative runs many strands at once and deepens none of them. Who it is for: viewers who like youth narratives set in seventies New York. Who it is not for: the emotional register is heavy, the plot familiar, and some characters are formulaic.