Paperhouse

Paperhouse is based on the brilliant idea of depicting the line between childhood and adolescence through children’s drawings. The film does not take these drawings as primitive records of reality, but rather as a faithful depiction of imagination. The narrative is about an adolescent girl who in puberty begins to define herself against everything and everyone, but her drawings, among other things, indicate that at heart she is still a child who does not perceive her actions causally, but only egocentrically. Her adolescence thus unfolds through her gradual acceptance of responsibility and awareness of the consequences of her caprices. The girl is troubled by feverish dreams, during which she finds herself in the literally real world of her drawings. This time, however, the fantasy is not formed according to the her ideas, but actually defies her with its consistent logic that everything materialises within it, though everything is exclusively what she draws into it. When the girl tries to subjugate this world and childishly rebel against it, she falls into increasingly bizarre and terrifying visions. Paperhouse is fascinating due to its original premise (adapted from the novel Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr) and its ambition to show the transitional period of adolescence as an ambiguous and essentially traumatising experience, which is expressively conveyed through the simple and warped production design. (22.04.2014)

Paperhouse has the problem that I don’t like child protagonists (and on top of that, Anna is especially unlikeable) or the fantasy genre. I could give it four stars because the atmosphere of the dream sequences is superb, but for that the film would have to end twenty minutes earlier. The last act doesn’t have anything interesting going on, at most, the manifestation of the utter senselessness of that world, which is actually something typical that I can’t stand in the genre – anything can happen, because it’s fantasy… :-/ Paperhouse does have a couple of interesting scenes thanks to which I don’t regret watching it, but the children romantic fantasy label is lethal for me. (08.07.2010)