House of D (2004) - Duchovny crashes as writer/director

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Many elements combine mysteriously on this black and ocher-yellow colored poster for David Duchovny's House of D

A middle-aged man bikes around Paris with his girlfriend. He has realized that he should tell her his story: As a boy in New York with his best friend Pappas and his struggling single mother.

 

House of D is written and directed by feature-debuting David Duchovny (The X-Files (1999-02)), who also co-stars in the film.

Duchovny doesn't show huge potential as a writer/director here, and it doesn't elevate the coming-of-age drama/romance that it may be partly autobiographical, (it is unclear whether that is really the case.)

Anton Yelchin (Fright Night (2011)) is fairly good, but I couldn't help but wonder why he had to have such a haystack of hair on his head in the film. Duchovny's then real-life wife Téa Leoni (Wyatt Earp (1994)) is miscast and never credible as a 1970s mother. (She is somehow much too contemporary.) Robin Williams (A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)) is okay, and so is Erykah Badu (The Land (2016)). SPOILER - However she plays a locked up woman, whom the boy never sees, but whom he nevertheless 20 years later in his life decides that he needs to fly form Paris to New York to try to find...!?!

House of D suffers from an often incredibly weak dramatic push, and perhaps it would have worked better as a musical. Furthermore the framing story, (which involves Duchovny as the grown-up version of Yelchin's character), is a pile of overly sentimental dung.

 

Related post:

 

David Duchovny: Evolution (2001) - Reitman's sci-fi crazy-comedy is thoroughly entertaining (co-star)

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 6 mil. $

Box office: 389k $

= Box office disaster (returned 0.06 times its cost)

[House of D premiered 7 May (Tribeca Film Festival, New York) and runs 97 minutes. Shooting took place from September - November 2003 in Paris, France and in New York. The film opened #53 to a 36k $ first weekend in 2 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #22 and in 305 theaters, grossing 389k $. Gross numbers from the film's reported handful of international release markets have not been released. Duchovny (unsurprisingly) hasn't directed a film since; but he has directed TV-series again, beginning with Bones (2006, TV-series). Williams returned in Noel (2004); Yelchin in Fierce People (2005). House of D is rotten at 10 % with a 3.80/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of House of D?