This House is too sweet for its own good

HOUSE OF D (2004)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
(Originally written in 2004)

David Duchovny is Tommy, an artist in Paris who is late to take his son for a bike ride to celebrate the kid's 13th birthday, or so I figure. Tommy can't get inside his apartment since he presumably forgot his keys or his wife has locked him out. His son stays sleeping on the bench in a patio. Only in France. Then Tommy tells his French wife the secrets of his teenage years in New York City that he never told her before. I wonder why.

It isn't that "House of D" is an insufferably saccharine film - it just compresses too much information in too short a running time. As the film takes us back to NYC in 1973, we see a teen in his twilight years. He is Tommy (Anton Yelchin), who attends a Catholic school and lives at home with a suicidal, widowed mother (Tea Leoni). She smokes a lot and has a habit of dumping her cigs in the toilet. She also has a habit of walking in on her son taking a shower. Tommy's best friend is Papass (Robin Williams, in a cringe-inducing performance), a mentally challenged assistant janitor at the Catholic School Tommy attends. Tommy and Papass try to save money to buy a bike, though most days are spent going to the movies. They do work at the neighborhood grocery store, making deliveries of various meats including bratwurst. There is also Tommy's crush on a Catholic schoolgirl (beautifully played by Zelda Williams, Robin's daughter); his frequent talks with an incarcerated woman named Lady (Erykah Badu) who can only see his reflection on a shard of glass; Papass stealing the very bicycle that he and Tommy were going to purchase; Papass growing jealous of Tommy because he is entering manhood, Tommy's mother in crying fits and taking pills, etc. None of these events are as credible as Tommy's relationship with his mother but we only get a trickle of their relationship, rather than a downpour. Then there is a tragedy that involves one too many episodes in such a short amount of time that you'll be gasping for air.

"House of D" wants to be a rich coming-of-age tale but it doesn't have much of a hold on any of its characters. We know Tommy can draw, loves his mother, and loves and protects Papass to the moon but there is nothing to chew on - these characters are devoid of any real emotional investment. However, there is a tangible sadness towards the end when we see Duchovny (who also wrote and directed this film) as the older Tommy, trying to settle his past or leave it behind him. But nothing comes of it since it simply assumes we will get the point. But what is the point when it gets drowned in forced sentimentality and has a much older (and boozed up) Papass saying all the right things in all the right places. Sounds like audience manipulation at its worst.

A few years ago, there was a nostalgic coming of age film that was told with such sweetness and sincerity that it refused to fold under the sentimentalist banner. That film was "A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries," one of the great films of the 1990's. "House of D" can't even approximate a tenth of what that film accomplished.