AFS LATES: Family Matters or, the Sitcom Review

Shown through his 1998 film, Sitcom, French writer and director François Ozon has a couple of thoughts on the concept of family. Its existence is one that brings together people, each loaded with their feelings, quirks, and faults, and ties them together through a natural biological connection. We’ve all had the thought of, “This person is really related to me in flesh and blood?” Looking at it from the outside in, family is a concept that holds people together despite their differences. Sure, we can break the ties metaphorically and mostly literally, but on a scientific level we’re tethered to these people for life. 

There’s no clear-cut way to “run” a family successfully; for any unsure answers we find, a million other questions pop up and remain unanswered. In a way, a lot of families are just going with it; a long bit that everyone decides to buy into in their own way. Ozon looks at these ideas and posits a world where a family tears itself apart and somehow comes back together, kicked  off by a small, white lab rat equipped with the power of horniness.

Prior to the film screening, Austin Film Society Lates programmer Jazmyne Moreno noted that Ozon is a filmmaker interested in actresses, big personalities, and a space where camp and queerness thrive. In essence, as Jazmyne puts it, Ozon could be considered the “French Pedro Almodovar,” which feels accurate when watching Sitcom. The film opens in media res with a group of people being gunned down by a guy they just sang “Happy Birthday” to, before thrusting back to a few months earlier to meet the seemingly normal family that will soon have their unit torn apart by a rat. We have Helen (Evelyne Dandry), the family matriarch; Jean (Francois Marthouret), the patriarch; Sophie (Marina de Van), the teenage daughter; and Nicolas (Adrien de Van), the teenage son. Initially, these people look like they were pulled right out of an Abercrombie & Fitch photoshoot, all perfect hair and clothes cozied up in the nice rooms of their nice, expensive looking house in the French suburbs.

But then, the rat comes home. Or more accurately, Jean brings the family a rat he took from a lab he works at. Immediately, the rodent begins to have a strange effect on the family, starting with Nicolas, who, after a few moments of alone time with the beast, announces his homosexuality at family dinner. The reveal is a shock to Helen, but remains hardly a concern for the other members, who meet the news with a mix of “told you'' attitude (courtesy of Sophie) and ho-hum acceptance (courtesy of Jean, who comedically goes on a quick history lesson about how the ancient Greeks were a dope bisexual culture).

This marks the start of Ozon’s tongue-in-cheek teardown of the family unit. From there, Sophie throws herself out a window, leaving her paralyzed and with a hankering to explore the world of BDSM relations with her boy-next-door boyfriend, David (Stephane Rideau). Nicolas, now free from the constraints of the stuffy expectations of his parents begins to dabble in bedroom orgies and hookups with his school gym teacher. Even the family’s new maid, Maria (Lucia Sanchez), lets loose, looking to make a move on anyone in the vicinity. In between it all, Helen tries to hold the unit together as it crashes in on itself in a seemingly random bout of free expression and horniness.

As each family member goes on their own journey of self-discovery, Ozon offers comedic set pieces that build off the last in taboo-ness and scale. This is a film that starts with a comparatively tame yet still uncomfortable dinner where a family member comes out of the closet and quickly moves onto sequences that involve bedroom orgies, full-blown incest entanglements, and giant monsters. The main instigator of all these things being that tiny rat, who, when all is said and done, remains a bit vague in its meaning other than acting as a random agent of chaos. Still, Ozon manages to make all these events fit together in his examination of a family coming to terms with each other’s peculiarities. Do they learn to accept one another, weird kinks and all, in any normal way? Not at all, but for Ozon, it’s the thought that counts.

The main strength of Sitcom lies in its initial connection to Helen. She is a mother and wife that one would see in any other generic family comedy or drama: welcoming, a bit aloof to her kid’s experiences, but ultimately determined to do whatever she can to help her family. Sitcom places this archetype in a world that becomes filled with Ozon’s various taboo and humorous obstacles. Dandry is the film’s thematic and comedic backbone, initially finding comedy in her character’s exasperated reactions to her family’s wacked out behavior, before going on her own journey of taboo emancipation. 

Every family member gets their moment to shine comedically, with de Van taking Sophie’s “broody teen” schtick to extremely kinky lengths as her brother de Van takes Nicolas down a goofy path of queerness that hasn’t seen a metaphorical dick object it isn’t happy to use. Sitcom eventually brings them all together in a conclusion that throws the film’s final act into B-movie monster territory. Somehow, even with this ridiculous last-minute pivot, Ozon brings all his weirdos together, displaying a softness for families that, despite their own hangups, come together when the time calls for it.

There’s certainly a little more thematic material to the titjobs and mysteriously powerful rats of Sitcom, but on the other hand, it’s hard to blame one for taking Ozon’s goofy jokes at face value. They are well-crafted, and most of them are funny, but even in its light runtime, one can feel the filmmaker running out of things to say and joke about. Once the jokes about Nicolas’ new found preference for hosting orgies and Sophie’s constant yearning for death and the pain of her lover, David, are out of the bag, Ozon just circles back around to them as the movie moves forward. These jokes don’t build out from their initial introduction, they’re just regurgitated. Maybe that’s why a big monster comes to play in the final act. It’s a last act hail mary that fully secures the film into an absurd world where, instead of accepting change, the bourgeois become a literal monster. The character that undergoes this transformation is the least developed and as a result, it’s hard to get a grasp on what one is supposed to think or feel about them suddenly becoming a monster. 

In the moment, it’s fun to see a big rat/human hybrid pop up on screen. But sitting with the sequence after a few moments just brings up the thought of “Okay, that happened.” It’s a moment that feels like the equivalent of a stand-up comedian at the end of their set coming back on stage and saying, “Oh! And then this thing happened! Ain’t that a thing?!” There’s probably some metaphor in that part, but I couldn’t see too clearly past the intentionally cheesy monster props to decipher what that would be. But maybe that’s the appeal of a filmmaker like Ozon, who throws any and everything at the wall to make sure you see that his one joke is a bit deeper than it looks.