Life Like Ghosts
I watched the Catalan film, “El Habitante Incierto,” this evening and the movie is quite a creepy treatment of loneliness that, sadly, collapses under it’s aspirations to be a David Lynch film. The plot, as such, is the story of an architect named Felix who finds himself living alone in a mansion after his girlfriend unexpectedly moves out. The film uses unexplained knocks, shuffles, and creaks to convince the audience that Felix might not be as alone in the house as he thinks. Sadly, as a review in Variety pointed out, the film is twenty minutes longer than it should be and blows its wad trying to be “realistic” in its conclusion.
The thing about the film that struck me, though, has more to do with my living conditions at the moment than anything to do with the filmic quality of a movie that you probably won’t ever see but probably should. I was watching the movie in my bedroom on headphones and would occasionally, especially during the first half of the film, hear people knocking around in the rest of the house. Inevitably, I confused bumps on film for bumps in the house. What really bothered me, though, (because I’m so over the technological confusion of reality) was the fact that before watching the movie I had mentally noted the fact that living with my roommates is a lot like living with ghosts. Nice ghosts, of course, but ghosts nonetheless.
