It will be easy for audiences to dismiss this film. In fact, the ambitious project by French-Swiss director Ursula Meier demands a lot from the casual viewer. It is obvious Ms. Meier wanted to say a lot about the disintegration of a family at the center of the story that we first meet on a happy, playful note.

One always wonders about those houses built so close to a highway, or train tracks. The noise alone, would drive the inhabitants mad. As this tale begins, the place where it is located seem almost an idyllic place in which to raise a family. True, the house is situated a few meters away of what appears to be a highway under construction, or perhaps abandoned. The children are able to cross the road without any problems. Michel, the working father leaves the car on the other side of the roadway and Marthe, the mother, can tend to her work without anyone looking at her.

This is a family where the bathtub is shared by parents and children without any question of modesty on anyone's part. Judith, the older daughter loves to sunbathe in the space next to the house clad in a bikini. Judith object when a conservative swim suit arrive for her sister Marion. The younger brother, Julien, loves to run freely in his bicycle.

On the surface, everything seems to be well with the family. Unfortunately, one day, workers arrive to resurface the highway. With that, an infernal traffic drives the family into a frenzied state. Gradually, the inner fabric of what made these five people stick together, begins to erode. Judith is the first one to decamp, when a traffic snarl stops traffic in front of the house. The others try noise stoppers in their ears, to no avail. Michel, in desperation begins to fix the problem by replacing all doors and windows with cinder block, hoping to isolate themselves from the outside noise. Marthe, who has been the most affected by the changes in their lives, wakes up one day and begin to take free herself and the others from the madness they have endured.

"Home" in spite of its premise, doesn't feel claustrophobic at its darkest moments. Ms. Meier wanted perhaps to make a statement for the obvious changes that progress, by way of a new highway, brings. After all, don't we all want to escape to other, more interesting, and quieter places? The family's foundation is shaken by the advent of outsiders looking in on them. They were fine by themselves, but now, even the most menial things like hanging clothes to dry take a different meaning.

The film is worth a view by serious fans. Isabelle Huppert, one of the best actresses around, makes us feel her pain and guilt in her heart. Oliver Gourmet is also effective as Michel. Adelaide Leroux, Madeleine Budd, and Kacey Mottet Klein are seen as Judith, Marion and Julien.

The cinematography by Agnes Godard draws us into the oppressive world Ms. Meier created. Ursula Meier is a serious director who likes to explore for her audience simple things one wouldn't even think about, which is the key to understanding this bizarre tale she has created.

Isabelle Huppert is a French mother of three, whose husband goes off to work in a big green diesel Mercedes estate. Their youngest is a boy, about 8. Then a girl, about 14, who's studious and questioning. Eldest is a late-teen daughter who wears as little as possible, chain-smokes and sunbathes in a bikini on a lounger in the garden, with heavy metal pounding from a ghetto-blaster.

This scenario and scene is featured and remains with us most of the time, in one form or another. Oh, except that their rather run-down shabby house sits right bang next to a motorway, that carries no traffic, except as the biggest car park imaginable for the family, who also use it as an extension to their property. They need to cross this bitumen desert to reach civilisation; work, shops and school for the kids.

One day, the boy sees trucks on the carriageway, whilst out on his bike. Soon after telling his father, who doesn't believe him, the motorway is resurfaced overnight. Radio reports say that it's the missing link in the national network and there's huge interest from the motoring public. The two youngest anticipate some new projects coming on.

What happens next is bizarre, believable and really rather frightening. And comical. By trying to live their (rather odd) lives exactly as before - crossing the road for school, shopping, bikini-sunbathing - all a few feet away from juggernauts and during a heatwave.

The way that the stakes against them get higher and naturally seem more bizarre, the more they try and carry on regardless, perhaps in the same way as if you tried to re-route an ant trail. Toward the end, you will start wondering where on earth all this can possibly lead to - I'm not going to spoil it for you!

I did think of one of Michael Haneke's early films when watching 'Home' that had this sort of 'in reverse' psychology, but which was decidedly cold, un-humorous - about a perfectly ordinary middle-class Austrian family, who coped - and then didn't.

You can, of course, take Swiss director Ursula Meier's fable as a comedy, or an environmental statement or a family drama, or all three. Being very different, it grabs the attention, without ever being ridiculous and somehow manages to sustain this element and story all the way through. It's also decidedly 'Continental', the bathing habits of the eldest daughter, naked and smoking in the bath listening to her Walkman, with the rest of the family chatting away next to her, mostly clothed. This - and other forms of a natural lack of inhibition seems healthy and refreshing, especially compared to our British straight- laced ways.

I give 9/10 as it's an ambitious film in both its audacity and originality and the fact that it gets away with it, becoming a sort of psychological horror. . .For a film to be so memorable is rare these days, although the title, unfortunately is. All the players, especially Huppert (naturally) are uniformly excellent and totally believable, as is their environment, which IS worrying....

Have you ever found yourself wondering about those people who live right alongside the freeway - the anonymous folk whose lives we peer into briefly as we hurtle our way past their apartments and houses en route to our destinations? Well, the artists who made "Home" certainly have, and the answer they've come up with makes for a fascinating, one-of-a-kind cinematic experience that, even more than most movies, has to be seen to be appreciated.

The family in "Home" leads a relatively carefree and decidedly unconventional lifestyle. Their house stands adjacent to an abandoned freeway, which they use as their own private recreation area. They also view bath time as a communal experience (this being Switzerland and all).

All is going reasonably well (despite some mild familial tension here and there),until one day and without any warning, the roadway is reopened to traffic, shattering the family's once-peaceful existence with the sounds of whooshing cars and honking horns, the penetrating odor of exhaust fumes and fossil fuels, a diminution of privacy (especially during traffic jams),and a nonstop assault on the senses. Even getting to the other side of the road – to school or to work – becomes a daily, death-defying game of chicken with speeding vehicles whose drivers have no intention of slowing down for bothersome and unwelcome pedestrians.

This tremendously odd little film is obviously intended as a parable about the oppressiveness and chaos of modern life as it encroaches ever more forcefully onto the peace and tranquility of a rural existence. The family members become increasingly ill-tempered, paranoid, neurotic, even violent as the outside world inexorably presses its way into their once-placid lives.

But far more than the characters and themes, it is the astonishing mise-en-scene that ultimately works its way into the viewer's psyche and that makes it hard not only to avert one's eyes during the course of the movie but to get back to one's own "reality" once it's over. Director Ursula Meier's work here is reminiscent of Luis Bunuel in one of his less playful moods, as she focuses on a group of everyday people trapped in a surrealistic nightmare from which they are unable to awaken. It is definitely a case in which the scene becomes an integral reflection of the psychological states of the characters.

Isabelle Hupert and Olivier Gourmet play the parents; Madeleine Budd and Kacey Mottet Klein their two children; and Adelaide Leroux, Gourmet's nubile daughter from a previous marriage who spends most of her time sunbathing for the highly appreciative motorists and truckers who keep whizzing on by.

Unique and unforgettable.