House?

For a film to start with interview footage of Orson Welles proclaiming that a good film is easy to make, a certain expectation is set. Not necessarily that what we’re about to see is a film that considers itself good, but perhaps that it’s about to build on that stance or smash it apart completely. Either of those options would have been an interesting approach, but neither is representative of what House? really is. There’s more of an abstract idea at the centre of the narrative than there is any kind of traditional structure, but it doesn’t appear to be anything to do with anything that we hear from Welles at the start.

Soundtracked by an Iranian song with is subtitled throughout, it almost takes on the form of a music video more than it does a film. As the lyrics talk quite generally about a house, we get a monochromatic tour of one with only a single character. Like with the footage of Welles at the start, though, it’s unclear where the character is supposed to feature. In fact, it’s not even clear where the character is supposed to be there at all as all they are is a moving figure in the distance. Everything else is just walls, doors and floors without much movement.

There are some issues with the cinematography that are difficult to ignore. It seems as if there are multiple instances where the camera has been forced into a tight space, and the resulting shot feels unnatural and claustrophobic as a result of it. In one example of a 360-degree panning shot, we end up with a few seconds just of a plain white wall because of it, and again it’s unclear where this is supposed to add anything.

It would have perhaps been beneficial to have been given more context at the beginning if there is any to share. It feels as if a small idea has been stretched out to become a short film without much purpose, and opening on a quote that seems to bear little meaning to the film itself only adds to that. If there is more to it than just a few shots of a home’s interior while a vaguely related song plays, there needs to be more of a trail for us to follow.