“The Zone of Interest,” written and directed by Jonathan Glazer and loosely based on a novel of the same name by Martin Amis, begins as a lakeside idyll. It does not end that way. Its subject is the Höss family — Rudolph, Hedwig, their five children, and a dog. They live in a stucco villa, and are devoted to horticulture. Their neighbor, though, is Auschwitz, Rudolph is the commandant, and he can walk to work. 

The film is a study in foreground and background, taken to extremes. We never see what happens inside Auschwitz, a complex of death and slave labor where more than one million people were murdered —  the majority of them gassed on arrival —  during the Holocaust. The movie’s title, interessengebiet in German, refers to the 40 square kilometer area immediately surrounding the camp. That is where “Zone,” from A24, is set.