Cache (Hidden)
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Movie Reviews of Cache (Hidden)
Movie Review: psychotic withdrawal
Summary: 4 Stars
As a boy of 6 Georges Laurent (Daniel Auteil) was responsible for what some might consider to be an atrotious crime: he lied about something and the result was that another boy's life was changed forever. Arguably you cannot hold a six-year-old responsible for the fate of another child and yet what is fascinating is that even when Georges Laurent has reached middle-age he still refuses to acknowledge anything like remorse or regret. His way of dealing with his own demons is to withdrawal into himself, to sleep, but even that is no escape for the past still presses in on him through recurring dreams.
As far as we know Georges has been having these dreams even before the videos start arriving and he may have been having them his entire life. This may explain why as a middle-aged man Georges is bitter and suffers from an inability to connect to others. Instead of connecting to other people he isolates himself behind a wall of books and videos (every wall in his house is lined with books and/ or videos). It would seem Georges prefers the impersonality of books and films to people. Thus it is fitting that he should be a host of a television book chat show for on the show he simply asks a set of formulaic questions, and he can control the content (as well as his own persona) with editing. Georges' wife Anne organizes all of their social functions and really it would seem that the group of friends is really her reponsibility, not his. At social gatherings he seems too preoccupied with his own life to give any attention to others. Georges simply seems frozen and remote. When the mysterious packages start arriving he thinks he knows where they are coming from (even though in truth we never know where they are coming from or why they are being sent) but he refuses to share his thoughts with his wife. This causes extreme marital stress and Anna (Juliette Binoche) is pushed to her breaking point--not so much because she fears the tapes or what they might mean but because she fears that her husband cannot tell her the truth about himself or anything else. Their own son, interestingly named Pierrot (who is approximately the same age as Georges was when the events happened), also suffers because his parents cannot tell him exactly what it is that is causing all of the stress in their lives. This family is not simply dysfunctional, it is in a state of total breakdown.
The film is reminiscent of Haneke's THE PIANO TEACHER because this film is also about a sociopath. What makes this film potentially more disturbing, however, is that while THE PIANO TEACHER did shocking things we could at least attempt to explain these things away by reference to her traumatic childhood. But in CACHE Georges, a young boy of six brought up with every conceivable privilege, does a shocking thing and we have no way of understanding why. How can a six-year old do something so cruel? And then keep that cruel act locked up inside for so long? On that day when he was six he ruined not only the other boys life but his own as well. We might say to ourselves that he could not have possibly known exactly what it was that he was doing and why he was doing it but can we know that for certain?
I think the film asks where does cruelty come from, and where does selfishness come from and where does racism come from? What are the reasons, what are the rationales behind these things? And since we cannot say with any certainty where these things come from we feel helpless to find a cure.
A disturbing film that will annoy those who feel like its unfair of filmmakers to give us clues with no real way of finding any definitive solutions to the "mystery". The film will appeal to those who like psychological case studies.
Movie Review: Caché: another example of why I love French cinema.
Summary: 4 Stars
"A feature film is twenty-four lies per second." -- Michael Haneke.
Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke (Code Unknown, The Piano Teacher (Unrated Edition)) is known for his "disturbing" film style. "My films are intended as polemical statements against the American 'barrel down' cinema and its dis-empowerment of the spectator," he says. "They are an appeal for a cinema of insistent questions instead of false (because too quick) answers, for clarifying distance in place of violating closeness, for provocation and dialogue instead of consumption and consensus." That said, his haunting 2005 French film Caché is set in upscale Paris. Juliette Binoche returns to play her character, Anne Laurent, introduced in Haneke's earlier film, Code Unknown, and Daniel Auteuil plays her husband Georges. He is a public television personality, and Anne is a book publisher. They are smug French intellectuals who live with their 12-year-old son, Pierrot (Lester Makedonsky). Their haute-bourgeois life is first threatened when mysterious videotapes start arriving on their doorstep showing nothing more than static footage of their home, and then again when subsequent cassettes are accompanied by crude crayon drawings (as if drawn by a child). The Paris police refuse to take the matter seriously. The anonymous photographer is never obvious. However, assuming he knows who the culprit is, one tape leads Georges to the small apartment of an Algerian man named Majid (Maurice Bénichou), whose parents were killed in the 1961 Paris Arab-immigrant massacre when there were employed by Georges' family. One might quickly jump to the conclusion that the Majid's a terrorist. Bewildered, Majid denies knowing anything about the videotapes. Meanwhile, Georges not only hides his involvement with Majid from Anne (including the flashbacks and nightmares he is having about a life-changing childhood event involving a young Majid), but he lies to his boss about Hajid's motives. Just as Antonioni left mysteries unresolved in his classic Italian films L'Avventura - Criterion Collection and Blow Up Haneke offers no easy solutions in Caché, only more questions that will leave viewers wondering if they missed something important along the way. Hanecke ends his film with a nod to Antonioni's 1975 film, The Passenger--which ends with an extended sequence that is among the most famous scenes in cinema. Like Code Unknown, Caché is an intellectually challenging film--frustrating, yes, but equally intriguing and rewarding. It confronts important issues of communication, xenophobia, consumer society, and privacy head on. Auteuil and Binoche bring fine performances to this creepy film, a film that will leave you on the edge of your seat with French anxiety.
G. Merritt
Movie Review: Where domesticity, the past and psychological terrorism meet.
Summary: 4 Stars
Cache is an examination of guilt, miscommunication and a long forgotten secret that threatens to blast a respectable middle-class French family apart. Be warned, viewers must follow this movie very closely - especially the dialogue - and it certainly won't be for everyone, but those who stick with this movie are going to be richly rewarded. In fact, I'm still perplexed over the riddle and I would welcome some input from other viewers (feel free to email me).
Cache presents a real heightened sense of paranoia as Daniel Auteuil's Georges and Juliette Binoche's Anne find themselves the unexpected victims of a stalker. For years, Georges has been in the public eye as a television talk-show host, whilst Anne makes a living as an accomplished book publisher. They have a 12-year-old son by the name of Pierrot and their comfortable life consists mainly of dinner parties and intellectually arguing with friends.
Their bucolic existence is shattered with the arrival of a series of surveillance tapes of their home, followed by drawings of violent child-like images. But who's watching them? And why? The police are no help as there has been no crime committed so the couple is left largely troubled and bewildered. One of the tapes records a street and a flat and through this Georges discovers an Algerian man named Majid (Maurice Benichou) whom Georges betrayed in his youth.
Majid - the son of Algerians who worked on Georges's parents' farm - initially denies sending the tapes, but Georges, now fuelled by a type of malleable anger, is convinced that his long-lost friend is responsible. Confronted by this living ghost of his childhood, George becomes ever more certain that it can only be Majid stalking him.
Obviously the videotapes are supposed to psychologically damage Georges and Anne, but the reason is never made clear. There are subtle clues which are made known when Georges confides in Anne about his past. All we know is that they may have their origin in Georges's youth and in the events of Oct. 17, 1961, when as many as 200 Algerian protesters died at the hands of the Paris police, then commanded by the former Nazi collaborator Maurice Papon.
Although we want to find out who is sending the videos, the film is mostly a triumph for showing how such a seemingly tight-knit marriage can crumble before our very eyes. Georges, to his detriment, keeps his suspicions from Anne, which causes her to rail into him over issues of trust and loyalty. She steadily becomes bitter and neurotic, unable to be a loving wife or a devoted partner. Binoche and Auteuil are quite spectacular as Georges and Anne and both give subtle, restrained and emotionally complex performances.
There is one dreadfully violent scene in Caché and another of wrenching emotional brutality, and both of these scenes really creep up on you, coming at the most unexpected moments, but for the most part the movie works by moderation and a careful, almost ponderous sleight of hand, rather than by assaulting us with numerous over-the-top histrionics.
Cache is a startling evocation of fear and culpability and where your enemies can suddenly appear in the most unlikely of places. It's a movie that is beguiling and thought provoking, as it is infuriating and exasperating, and it's where the lines of family dysfunction have never been so cleverly and shrewdly drawn. Mike Leonard June 06.
Movie Review: French Reign of Terror
Summary: 4 Stars
In Cache, director Michael Haneke creates a complex suspense film of grand psychological proportion where although mesmerized for over 90 minutes, the audience departs with a moody sense of perplexity that deeply disturbs and conjures in the mind more compelling post-9/11 possibilities than those originally thought feasible.
Does this film act as an allegory as some of the other reviewers have suggested of a modern day France dealing with the problems it created with the beurs, a generation of French-speaking and native born citizens who reflect by their language, racial and religious differences that they do not assimilate smoothly into the "norm" of French society? October 17, 1961
If so, Daniel Auteuil plays the twisted journey of main character, Georges Laurent, with his usual distinguished brilliance. Like the symbolic Marianne, Georges and his wife Anne (Binoche) epitomize the typical upper middle class urbanites; both can impart savvy tidbits of informed conversation during a dinner party and as a respective talk show host and author, hold their own in terms of lifestyle and career. As perfect as all this seems, when horrendous events are triggered and their routine world goes incredibly awry---videotapes and crayon drawings depicting the front façade of their building and scenes from Georges' childhood suggest that not only is the family under surveillance, the voyeur knows something unsavory about Georges' past---the couple is baffled into a state of stupefaction asking those familiar post-9/11 queries, `why us?' and `what did we do to deserve this?'
Georges' amateur detective work simultaneously uncovers his boyhood relationship with an Algerian child whose parents were killed by French police during the famous Paris Massacre of October 17, 1961 and exposes what could be a soft underbelly of French national guilt and defensiveness that acts as a metaphor for the confused social conscience directed towards millions of suspended-between-Algerian-and-French citizens who even after immigration and integration attempts at assimilation have been blamed for many of France's current problems.
On the other hand, perhaps Haneke's intent relies on controversies closer to home. Pierrot, the Laurents' son, may be experiencing the hormones-raging rebellion typical of most adolescent and teens. Wanting to rock his parents' established world, he may be perpetrating an elaborate practical joke that only he finds amusing.
Or Haneke may just be toying with the electron-charged atmosphere indigenous to most urban environments anticipating another third world sneak attack like 9/11. Seeped in a backdrop of social and economic inequality, in the face of such focused hatred the so-called civilized world asks `why' while its third world victims cry out, `why not?'
Bottom line? Cache boasts of fascinating performances in a plot that forever intrigues with its glimpses into the lives of a modern family threatened by either their own political guilt or the quintessential morph from boy to man utilizing a technological reign of terror that plays on a defensive social conscience. Recommended to those who do not expect answers.
Diana Faillace Von Behren
"reneofc"
Movie Review: Exceptional and unusual thriller with no neat, tied up ending
Summary: 4 Stars
Georges (Daniel Auteuil) and Anne (Juliette Binchoe)have the perfect life until a series of tapes begin showing up on their doorstep in plastic bags. The tapes are uninterrupted shots of the front of their house, a farmhouse where Georges grew up and other areas where they have visited and/or lived previously. Georges goes to the police but discovers that these pranks aren't against the law even if they are they are a form of stalking. The title really tells you more about the film in some respects than the film itself--what's most important is what is "hidden" or kept from the audience by the director and Georges himself once he begins to piece together things in his mind.
Unsettled and without anywhere to turn for help Georges decides to take matters into his own hands in effect changing their life forever. I should warn you that this isn't a traditional thriller with all the mystery solved and everything neatly tied up in the end. Its been said by others that there are plenty of clues that show the heart of this mystery but I believe the mystery itself (like that in "Vertigo" or "Rear Window" both films very much comparable in that respect)the "McGuffin" as Hitchcock called it isn't as important as the changes the characters go through because of the mystery that drives the film. Haneke probably doesn't know or care what the real reason is just that it changes the characters in unexpected revealing ways. So don't go into this film expecting an easy resolution--there isn't one. Haneke's film is more about the journey that Georges and Anne take than the destination itself.
"Cache" demands the viewers attention without a promise of a pay off. Director Michael Haneke makes us, in many respects, both identify with the stalker and Georges & Anne; we are deeply unsettled by this mystery but we also observe it much as the person taking the videotapes on the outside watching things coldly and with calculation. The most important element revealed in "Cache" is not the identify or the reason for this strange form of stalking but the quality of the person being observed. The reaction to these strange videos reveal far more about the character of Georges and Anne than anything else. It reveals who they are underneath their veneer of civility and the more we learn that we truly don't knew these characters as they present themselve to each other and us.
The film looks nearly flawless in its presentation on DVD. The 5.0 soundtrack sounds quite good. The extras for those that are interested include a 1/2 hour inteview with the director, a standard "making of" featurette and a collection of trailers for other Sony releases. I understand there's a two disc release that was came out in France. It's a pity that we didn't get all of those supplements in the United States.
This unusual film (in French with English subtitles)won't be for everyone. If you want your mysteries all solved like in an Agatha Christie novel or Sue Grafton book than this isn't the film for you. If you like films that present themselves as a puzzle with many possible outcomes than "Cache" might be something you'll enjoy.