Francois Ozon – internationally acclaimed enfant terrible of French cinema – takes inspiration from Spanish playwright Juan Mayorga’s The Boy in the Last Row for a scintillating and witty thriller about story-telling.
Weary literature teacher Germain (Fabrice Luchini) finds himself enlivened by talented student Claude (Ernst Umhauer), who infiltrates the middle-class family of classmate Ralph (Bastien Ughetto) for a writing assignment.
Germain and his art curator wife (Kristin Scott Thomas) are soon transfixed; critically examining the merits of what might be a genius work of naturalism, a class satire, or something else entirely…
Utilising familiar narrative conventions to entice and entwine, Ozon soon turns the tables on the audience as Claude’s sexual preoccupations with Ralph’s mother cause more surreal and questionable events to occur that blur the line between what is fact and fiction for characters and spectators alike.