On the highway to hell
A family on the edge of nowhere, lost in the middle of fields, living in a ramshackle house along side an abandoned highway.
He is a mechanic, or a builder, good with his hands. He’s building a swimming pool. With a bit of luck he’ll have it finished for the summer holidays. She stays at home and looks after the house, the children, does a bit of gardening.
The eldest daughter has finished school, and does little more than sun herself all day in a bikini, chain-smoking Winstons and listening to heavy metal. The second daughter studies hard, know her physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, statistics. The boy rides up and down the empty highway and plays with his friends.
One day the boy, Julien, announces that he saw some heavy trucks working some distance up on the highway. The girls think he’s making it up for attention, but they do come, sweeping the family’s possessions, an arm chair, a satellite dish, a soccer ball, off the road, and at night the machines come, resurfacing and repainting the road.
Suddenly, after having been built and then forgotten about, perhaps tied up in a legal tangle, the ghost road is put into service. The family has nowhere to go, and is confronted with all-day all-night four lane traffic. And then begins to disintegrate. When the outside becomes too much to bear, unable to leave, they turn inside.
Of special note is an electrifying scene with Kacey Mottet (Julien) in what we’ll name the bathroom scene. A fascinating first film.
