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CACHE (HIDDEN) A film review by David N. Butterworth Copyright 2006 David N. Butterworth
*** (out of ****)
A videotape is left on a bourgeois Parisian couple's doorstep with no note, no identifying information. When they pop it into their VCR the tape reveals itself to be surveillance footage of the front of their townie townhouse, with people, cars, and the couple themselves, coming and going--innocently, benignly. The tape, a static shot from across the street, runs several hours.
Who made the recording? What does it mean? What do they want?
More tapes arrive, each one a little more intrusive, a little more personal than before. They're accompanied by anonymous phone calls and drawings, grotesque childlike images depicting mouths and throats splashed with red, both as postcards sent to the husband's work and as wrapping paper, swaddling the tapes themselves.
So begins "Caché" ("Hidden"), a spine-tingling and creepy paranoid thriller from writer/director Michael Haneke ("The Piano Teacher").
The plot device of an anonymous videotaping stalker is not new. David Lynch's "Lost Highway," for example, opened strongly with Bill Pullman's character finding a recording of the inside of his house and then, later, clandestine footage of him killing his wife! But whereas that film quickly deteriorated into a surreal nightmare featuring body morphing and yellow bastards, "Caché" stays focused and ratchets up the tension. Some sicko clearly likes to watch!
As family life threatening matters progress, the husband (Daniel Auteuil) takes up the investigation himself, since the police can do nothing until either their home is firebombed or someone is "half killed." But if this is blackmail or extortion then where's the ransom note? Georges has a hunch who might be responsible when one of the cassettes first shows his childhood home and then the location of a seedy Algerian flat.
The film works partly because of the credibility imparted by its two leads. Auteuil's Georges plays a successful TV talk show host and Juliette Binoche (Anne) is an editor. Their husband-and-wife bickerings, miscommunications, and mistrust are convincingly played, especially when a wrongdoing from Georges' past, one until then hidden from his wife, may prove relevant.
Haneke too should be applauded for his clever treatment of this mostly psychological thriller punctuated (be warned) by a couple of shocking scenes. Today's technological advances have made it more and more difficult to differentiate filmed images from videotaped ones and Haneke uses this modern obstacle to its fullest advantage, tricking us into believing we are watching one thing before revealing it to be another. This technique is employed enough times in "Caché" that we start to question what it is we're actually viewing, forcing us to think, demanding our utmost attention. Is it live or is it Memorex? At times the film is actually daring in its stagnancy.
The only downside to Haneke's quizzical approach is that you might well envisage your own conclusion to the film, a conclusion eminently more satisfying than the one presented.
For the final scene is indeed subtle and confusing. Anti- climactic definitely. Even with a greater understanding of the political undertones at play here the denouement remains frustratingly ambiguous, leaving way more questions than answers. Answers that, in the spirit of this otherwise fine Hitchcockian drama, remain hidden.
-- David N. Butterworth dnb@dca.net
Got beef? Visit "La Movie Boeuf" online at http://members.dca.net/dnb
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