Queering the Family in François Ozon'sSitcom

Michelle Chilcoat

... Oedipus begins in the mind of the father.

François Ozon's Sitcom (1997) was part of an international fin-de-millénaire wave of "arty family shocker" films, as one critic dubbed them,' that put the spotlight on bad fathers, particularly on their psycho-sexual crimes. Along with Ozon's work, there appeared, for example, the Danish Festen (Thomas Vinterberg, 1999), the American Happiness (Todd Solonz, 1998) and the British The War Zone (Tim Roth, 1999), all culminating in the arrest, banishment or murder of the abusive patriarch. A number of important distinctions, however, set Ozon's Sitcom apart. One is its treatment of transgression, particularly in the form of incest, as a liberating rather than traumatizing act. Another lies in Sitcom's portrayal of proactive women: whereas in Festen, Happiness, and The War Zone, women are represented as passive enablers and/or victims of the father's tyranny; in Sitcom, they take an active role in the film's happy, healthy resolution of conflict. Still another distinguishing feature is the film's outcome in which a new family order is represented, organized around queer relationships that are realized upon the elimination of the father. These distinctions can be attributed to Ozon's restaging or queering of Freud's Oedipal drama, which turns on the recognition of a multiplicity of sexual desires, as opposed to masculine desire alone, the only one Freud would legitimate in his theories of human sexuality.

Sitcom opens with the parting of a red curtain, signaling to the viewer that what is being represented is indeed a "scene," a drama that has been staged. In this scene, a father, briefcase in hand, is returning from work to his bourgeois home where he finds his family members regaling their "papa" with a hearty round of "Happy Birthday." The camera lingers on the home's elegant façade as the family inside celebrates the birth of the patriarch. Their joyful singing is cut short, however, by the cocking of a gun. After a female voice is heard asking, "Jean, why?" a round of shots and screams are heard and, then, silence.

The film flashes back to "several months earlier," ostensibly so the viewer can learn what has led to the father's violent act. This time, a woman is approaching the house. A comfortably yet elegantly dressed "lady of the house," Hélène, greets the woman at the door. This latter is Maria, the new maid, and her accent indicates that she is "foreign;" she tends to look at Hélène mysteriously when Hélène's attention is focused elsewhere, but no clue is given yet as to what this mystery might be. Next we see Nicolas, the nerdy introverted son, reading a science magazine. Then a handsome young man, David, arrives and locks into a lusty embrace with the daughter, Sophie, who has just bounded down the stairs to greet him. Finally, Jean, the father, returns from work to round out this picture of the perfect bourgeois family. Only today, dad has brought home "a gift." To the horror of his wife and delight of his children, he unveils a cage containing a white lab rat.

In the next scene, Maria arrives again at the door, this time to attend a dinner party; since a guest has fallen ill, Hélène has invited Maria to take her place. Maria is arrayed in a revealing evening gown, and compared to Hélène, she is clearly overdressed for the occasion. But this detail does not faze Hélène – to the contrary, she seems delighted. However, the appearance of Maria's Cameroonian husband, Abdu, who arrives at the door shortly after Maria, does distract her. At the very least, Hélène seems "surprised" by his appearance, but then regains her composure in order to welcome the guests (who are clearly marked as "foreigners") into her home.

As Maria and Abdu share before-dinner drinks with Hélène, Jean, Sophie, and David, Nicolas, the introverted son, sits alone in his bedroom where he is drawn to stroke the rodent (Hélène has insisted that Nicolas keep the creature in his room), and from here on out, each person who comes in contact with the rat will express heretofore hidden sexual desires. At dinner, Nicolas interrupts Abdu's explanation of French colonial history (of which Jean and Hélène appear woefully ignorant) to announce that he is homosexual, and then runs back to his room. The mother is beside herself with grief, while the father remains calm: "It's nothing serious," he reassures, "just adolescence, a passing thing." Maria convinces Abdu, a high school gym teacher presumably familiar with the woes of teenage boys, to have a talk with Nicolas. But once in Nicolas's bedroom, Abdu proceeds to seduce Nicolas – that is, after the rat bites Abdu. In a scene that follows, daughter Sophie allows the rat to crawl all over her supine body. She then commands David not to touch her and tells him she will "talk to him like a dog." A little later, she is aroused from sleep, clutching her crotch as if writhing in the experience of an orgasm. But then, seemingly inexplicably, she makes her way to a window, opens it and jumps out. The camera focuses on her crumpled body below.

The film now jumps forward to show that Nicolas is nothing less than radiant – coming out has clearly agreed with him. Sophie, on the other hand, has transformed into a frustrated dominatrix, confined to a wheelchair and open in her suicide attempts that go unnoticed...