‘House of D’

The fine performances of an impressive cast help to overcome a simplistic script in David Duchovny’s directorial debut.

By: Bob Brown

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House of D stars Anton Yelchin (left), Robin Williams (right) and Téa Leoni (below).


   When you’ve achieved stardom, as David Duchovny has in his long-running TV show The X-Files, other doors open to you that might not otherwise. You’re allowed a free pass, as it were. For Mr. Duchovny, that pass is for his script and the direction of House of D.
   This picture might have been better as a TV special, where the size of the screen fits the ideas. It’s an inspirational coming-of-age movie, whose message is very simple: sometimes you find an unlikely angel who, in the words of the film’s marketing executives, "compelled you to be brave, encouraged you to shine or inspired a life change."
   In this story, that angel is Lady Bernadette (Erykah Badu), a prisoner in the Women’s House of Detention, who urged the 13-year-old Tommy Warshaw (Anton Yelchin) to pursue his dreams and to run from his tragedies.

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   The story is told in flashback by an older Tom Warshaw (Duchovny), who is an artist living in Paris with his wife (played by the stunning model Magali Amadei) and 13-year-old son Odell (Harold Cartier). As actor and director, Mr. Duchovny is not from a subtle school. At least not in this movie. He narrates his overwritten script in a mannered voice-over that is soon an unwelcome presence, pushing the story on you as if reading a book over your shoulder.
   What Tom is trying to do on the eve of Odell’s 13th birthday is make it a life-affirming, liminal experience, to somehow undo the tragedy that his own 13th year was for him. But we have to go back to those days to see what the tragedy was. You can take the New Yorker out of New York, but you can’t take New York out of the New Yorker.
   Young Tommy lives with his manic-depressive, chain-smoking mother (Téa Leoni, Duchovny’s wife) in an apartment so small that he sleeps under her bed. (Or maybe it’s that he doesn’t dare sleep elsewhere, since she has suicidal tendencies.) She’s a nurse, but we never see her at work, just at the claustrophobia-inducing flat. Tommy counts her pills each morning to be sure she isn’t overdosing. Leoni reportedly had to convince her husband she was right for this role. Viewers will wonder whether it was worth the struggle. It’s a small, shallow part without much meat but lots of opportunities for looking anguished.
   At his Catholic school, Tommy is the mischief ringleader, baiting his French teacher with double-entendres and literally cutting up the text in Bible class. (Frank Langella, a fine actor in a wasted cameo, does an embarrassing characterization of the priest who teaches this class, along with bad puns.) Tommy’s best friend is the school’s assistant janitor, Pappas (Robin Williams), a self-described "retard," whose name is the subject of more scatological punning. Williams begged to have prosthetic choppers made for his role. Duchovny resisted on behalf of the film’s tiny budget, then gave in, but was shocked when he saw the bill. The blessing may be that, while Williams gave his character more teeth, he reined in the usual Williams antics.
   However, Williams could not rise above the writing. Duchovny’s idea of amusing dialogue is bad punning and bathroom humor. Perhaps that’s appropriate for 11-year-olds, but a little goes a long way. Maybe Williams respected the script because he was playing opposite his own daughter in many scenes. Zelda Williams plays Tommy’s love interest, Melissa. She does a fine job, too, with a greater naturalness than most of the others in the cast.
   Also fine is Ms. Badu whose Lady Bernadette offers advice from her cell window to young Tommy on the street below. The boy has found refuge at the foot of the women’s prison, where he and Pappas hang out and stash the earnings from their meat delivery job. Mr. Yelchin, who has been acting since he was 5, plays his character with a wide-eyed bravado. Not that he chews the scenery, but his character isn’t written with much subtlety.
   I have no quarrel with the performances, which are all fine enough. It’s the simplistic script the cast has to work with. It’s surprising how thin the characterizations are, given Mr. Duchovny’s graduate education in English at Yale (to say nothing of his Princeton years). Along with that is the intrusive narration and the pretentiousness of starting the story in captioned French. Granted, the narrative starts in Paris, but the scene is affected. Who rides down the Champs Elysee on a bicycle at rush hour and lives to tell about it?
   We all loved David Duchovny as Agent Fox Mulder in The X-Files. In interviews, Robin Williams said that, while filming in New York, he was amused to see how onlookers greeted "Mulder" with obvious delight. It’s hard to shake such a successful career based on an indelible role. But Duchovny has moved on. Let’s hope his next move taps the brilliance many think him capable of, and that this film is merely a stumble along the way.
Rated PG-13. Contains sexual and drug references, thematic elements and language.