From writer-director François Ozon – the man who brought us the unnerving Swimming Pool and the camp murder-mystery musical Eight Women – In the House tells of Germain (an excellent Fabrice Luchini), a high-school teacher whose first-world problems consist of not understanding the art in his wife’s gallery (Kristin Scott Thomas, lovely as always) and marking uninspired student essays.

But when the young Claude Garcia (an attention-grabbing Ernst Umhauer) writes about a weekend spent infiltrating a classmate’s family and mocking their comfortable suburban existence, Germain is reinvigorated as a teacher of literature. He advises Claude to look even closer at the victims of his scrutiny while picking apart Fiction itself.

Just when you start to think Ozon hasn’t done anything weird for a good half hour, the film opens and dissects itself, throwing the audience into a state of crisis that proceeds to slap us in the face with an unexpected reference to Barbara Cartland.

Ozon raises questions that sprout further questions: What do we invent about strangers in order to understand them? Where are the lines between fiction and fact? And crucially, what can we tell about a writer from what he writes? Is this all in Claude’s head? Is it Germain’s wish-fulfilment? Does he want to mould Claude into a great writer, or does he desire him? Does he only want to peek behind the family’s closed doors?

If this is all sounding terribly bourgeois, that’s partly the point; the theme of class and equality is apparent from the opening scene, where the headmaster of Gustave Flaubert (in case the film wasn’t literary enough for you) makes the decision to bring back uniforms, in order to promote an atmosphere of equality amongst the students.

Claude is working-class with a disabled father; he seems personally aggrieved by the suburbia he simultaneously rips apart and longs to join. Even the aforementioned Klee watercolours are a poke at middle-class aspiration; the female of the household (a graceful Emmanuelle Seigner) has hung them up in her home but has no idea, until the young Claude explains them, what they represent.

There is a scene that perhaps shows us too much of Claude’s background. But of course, with all the reality-bending going on, this is a moot point. Ultimately, In the House is a funny, stylish and sinister drama that’s as satisfying to unravel and discuss as a great piece of literature.

Released in UK cinemas on Friday 29 March 2013.