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"No place like "Home" or: what makes a movie "Swiss"?"
Type
conference paper
Date Issued
2010-04-03
Author(s)
Abstract
In this paper I focus on the (im)possibility of making a "Swiss" film. I illustrate my thesis by way of analyzing the recent movie "Home" (2008) by Ursula Meier. How can we tell that it is a Swiss movie? The film features Isabelle Huppert in a leading role, has been funded by international co-production and the story is "glocal" at its best: it shows a family living happily together in a small house near a deserted highway in the middle of nowhere. The re-opening of the highway ends their peaceful life and threatens their daily routines. Refusing to move away they adapt creatively to their new environment, but the family is more and more disrupted by the noise and the pollution. At a superficial level the highway and the radio which is the family's central source of information throughout the film, can be read as metaphors of globalization and connection, whereas the isolated house becomes a symbol of reclusion in a familiar, thus local environment which has to be given up at the end in order to survive. The information that it is a movie from Switzerland discloses additional levels of understanding, which reveal deep structure of the movie and of Swiss identity likewise. I show that one can go even further, the family bricking itself in their tiny house could be seen as Switzerland refusing to join the European Union despite its economic and political dependence on it. Even in a local context, it is thus impossible to be neutral by "staying at home".
Language
English
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
Refereed
No
Book title
Creoles, Diasporas, Cosmopolitanisms
Publisher
ACLA American Comparative Literature Association
Publisher place
Columbia
Event Title
American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) Annual Meeting 2010
Event Location
New Orleans
Event Date
01.-04.04.2010
Subject(s)
Division(s)
Eprints ID
62019