Cinema
House of America
Marc Evans · 1997
Synopsis
A valley in the south, ten years after the mines have closed. A mother raises her children, now adults, on her own in an isolated house that open-cast excavation is gradually closing in on. The eldest and his sister invent an American life for themselves out of books and records, give themselves the names of writers and rebels from across the Atlantic, and end up no longer quite playing. The second brother works and would like it all to stop. The mother waits for the return of a man who left long ago.
Context
The film is based on a Welsh play of 1988, prize-winning in London, written by an author who had grown up in one of those valleys and who wrote the screenplay himself. The opencast mine advancing on the house is real: after the closure of the pits, the remaining coal was removed by digging from the surface, and whole villages were surrounded. The music is by a well-known Welsh musician, and the film belongs to the moment when a handful of feature films from the country suddenly drew attention.
Who it is for
An hour and thirty-five minutes in the English of the valleys, subtitled. The story shifts without warning from realism to the delirium of the two elder brothers.
Prizes and reception
The first feature film by its director, it earned him the prize for best debut at a Scandinavian festival and four Welsh BAFTA awards.