House Of D

Movie / Show Details

Amazon.com

House of D is a bittersweet, moving story of an American expatriate’s painful decision to come to terms with the childhood he fled in early 1970s New York City. David Duchovny wrote and directed this comedy-drama; he also stars as the adult version of the film’s hero, Tom Warshaw, an illustrator who has spent most of his life in Paris and decides—on the occasion of his son’s birthday—to finally reveal long-withheld facts about his past.
The bulk of the story, told in flashback, portrays 13-year-old Tom (Anton Yelchin) as a quick-witted prince of his neighborhood, a delivery boy who knows every eccentric on his bicycle route and a Catholic school kid fond of playing pranks on his clueless French teacher and soulful principal (Frank Langella). His best friend is the school’s mildly retarded, 41-year-old janitor, Pappas (Robin Williams), and his advisor on matters of the heart is Lady (Erykah Badu), a prison inmate whom the fatherless Tom (or Tommy, as he’s called in 1973) can neither see nor touch. Tommy’s vivacity is an asset at home, where his mother (Tea Leoni), a grieving widow with a mounting addiction to pills, is slipping away from her son’s ability to help. Duchovny’s screenplay sometimes borders on the precious: A number of scenes are enamored with their own boldness and originality, as if Duchovny has been squirreling away lots of colorfully expressive storytelling details for years, and unloaded them here. But that flaw all but disappears in the glow of House of D’s emotional resonance and honesty, not to mention several exceptional performances. Among these is Zelda Williams’s work as Tommy’s sage-beyond-her-years girlfriend, Melissa, whose name offers a suitable excuse to work a rather lovely Allman Brothers song into the soundtrack. –Tom Keogh

Product Description

An American artist living a bohemian existence in Paris, Tom Warshaw is trying to make sense of his troubled adult life by looking back at his extraordinary childhood. The year is 1973, and thirteen-year-old Greenwich Village native Tommy Warshaw is on the brink of becoming a man. While his bereaved single mother continues to mourn the death of his father, Tommy escapes his own grief by causing trouble at school and making afternoon meat deliveries with his best friend, Pappass, a mentally challenged janitor. Following the romantic advice offered by Lady, a prostitute incarcerated in the infamous Greenwich Village Women’s House of Detention, Tommy also experiences his first taste of love. Yet when an unexpected tragedy radically alters his world, Tommy must make a life-defining choice – one that will compel the adult Tom Warshaw, thirty years later, to finally confront his unfinished past.