Review: House of D
During the nineties, David Duchovny was loaded with work on the little screen. A tiny job, years of announcing stories on Red Shoe Diaries, and a pretty heavy job, spanning almost a decade, as Fox Mulder on the X-Files. The transition to the big screen was almost unnoticable. Playing God and Evolution where not the break-out hits you’d hope for. Now he’s back again, both in front and behind the camera. Also penning the script and choosing his wife Tea Leone to star, makes this a true Duchovny show (with the story probably containing real-life experiences from his youth).
At the core we have a coming of age story, with Anton Yelchin starring as Duchovny’s younger version. It poses some nice angles, but it’s not that intriguing. Outside this frame we have some contrived scenes to complement the main story, so that doesn’t totally work either. Acting is mostly good, and ironically, only Duchovny could’ve used some more direction.
As a writing style, he choses triviality above depth. As a first time, it’s not bad. But it’s not a heartfelt drama, nor is it a light comedy. You’ll have to do with a typical mediocre independent film.6½.