Written by controversial Welsh theatre director Ed Thomas "House of America" is a rather complex and artistic film with some interesting points to make about Welsh cultural identity. Set in a remote rural Welsh town the film tells the story of a rather warped family obsessed with the all things American. The characters are fed up with their boring, mundane existence in their remote South Wales community and fantasise about leaving for America to live with their father who supposedly left Wales to chase his dreams in the land of opportunity. However not all is as it seems and the truth is all too condemning for those who live in a dream like bubble of consciousness constructed from their fantasies of American literature. The horror of reality is too difficult to accept for the condemned hero of the film Sid and his Sister Gwenny who take on the personas of the American writer Jack Kerouac and his relationship with Joyce Johnson. The results are catastrophicly destructive as the truth of their reality slowly emerges to haunt them, and their disillusioned lives begin to fall apart. Ed Thomas has some interesting if not clichéd points to make about how we are all rapped up in the media culture of America and how Wales has no real cultural identity of its own. The usual Welsh stereotypes are dismissed as being artificially constructed and ultimately fake, there are no happy mining communities, no sheep no daffodils or rolling green hills in this film, just an empty void which is filled by borrowing off American culture which is ultimately all lies. An artistic, cleverly constructed film well worth watching if you can stand its dark and depressing nature. -Stuart Hall
Review of House of America
