Francois Ozon explores ideas of teaching, imagination and voyeurism

When Francois Ozon was invited by an actress friend to see her in a new play, he was less than keen. "I didn't want to go," he says. "I'm so always in demand - actors asking me to come [to their plays] and sometimes it's very boring." It's no surprise - he is one of France's most prolific, successful filmmakers, his work ranging from comedies ( 8 Women, Potiche) to tragedies ( Under the Sand, 5x2, Time to Leave).

Still, when he heard the title of Spanish playwright Juan Mayorga's work, he was intrigued. The story of a literature teacher who coaxes a pupil towards creative writing with life-changing results, the French translation - Le Garçon du Dernier Rang - literally means "The Boy in the Back Row". The son of a biology professor and a teacher, Ozon immediately related. "I was not a good student. I was very bad. I was really the boy in the back row."

Raised in Paris, the 45-year-old filmmaker claims he only "became a good student" when he began to study cinema. "At this moment, suddenly I became good. I was surprised at myself, because I had the feeling I would be the guy causing havoc in class."

At film school La Femis, he was taught by Eric Rohmer, the director of The Green Ray becoming a true inspiration on Ozon. "Suddenly, I had a feeling it was possible for me - I could find a way into cinema."

It was only years later, when Ozon began to find success with his first full-length feature film, 1998's Sitcom, that Rohmer realised just how he'd inspired the younger filmmaker. "He sent me a message because I said in the press that he was my teacher, and he was very touched by that," Ozon says. "That's what I wanted to say in this film. When you are a teacher, you don't realise it will be important for people. It's many years after you will realise that and sometimes it's too late."

After watching Mayorga's play, Ozon set out to adapt it into In the House, the 13th film of his career and one of his best. Fabrice Luchini stars as Germain, a teacher at a French secondary school who comes into contact with 16-year-old Claude (Ernst Umhauer). Encouraging his literary aspirations, Germain takes Claude's essays home to read to his art dealer wife (Kristin Scott Thomas). While titillated by the content, notably Claude's attraction to his best friend's mother, the story takes on a more ominous tone as the pupil insinuates his way first into his friend's house then his teacher's. Ozon, though, doesn't see the boy as cruel or vindictive.