Cache (Hidden) | Daniel Auteuil, Juliette Binoche

Cache (Hidden) | Daniel Auteuil, Juliette Binoche | MICHAEL HANEKE, OPUS 9

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Cache (Hidden)

	Cache (Hidden) Daniel Auteuil, Juliette Binoche Sony Pictures, 2006 average customer review:based on 108 reviews view larger image
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Academy Award®-winner Juliette Binoche (1997 Best Supporting Actress The English Patient) stars in CACH a psychological thriller about a TV talk show host and his wife who are terrorized by surveillance videos of their private life. Delivered by an anonymous stalker the tapes reveal secret after secret until obsession denial and deceit take hold of the couple and hurl them to the point of no return. CACH is director Michael Haneke's dark vision of a relationship torn mercilessly apart by the camera's unblinking eye. System Requirements:Running Time 118 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: R UPC: 043396138759 Manufacturer No: 13875

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Frustrating and fascinating

The comfortable lives of Georges (Daniel Auteuil) and Anne (Juliette Binoche), an upper-class French couple, are disrupted by the appearance of mysterious videotapes which show that their home is under surveillance. This becomes the trigger for Georges's guilty flashbacks concerning a boy who lived with his family when he was growing up, with tremendous consequences for his married life.

Director/screenwriter Michael Haneke's film frustrates many viewers with its inconclusive narrative. I was fascinated by the theme of guilt: how it can bubble just under the surface of our lives, its destructive power, and the influence it can have on others, including the next generation. I have come up with an explanation for events that satisfies me, and other viewers are invited to put together their own interpretations. It is a tribute to the richness of the film that it can support varying analyses. However, a film needs more than interesting themes to be a complete success; even when I was most disoriented by the narrative, I was riveted by the mystery at the heart of "Cache."

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MICHAEL HANEKE, OPUS 9

***** 2005. Written and directed by Michael Haneke. Three prizes at Cannes. Georges is receiving videotapes of himself with his family. Soon he suspects Majid to be the man responsible for this situation. Like Jean-Luc Godard, Steven Soderbergh, David Lynch or Atom Egoyan, the Austrian director Michael Haneke likes to play with the images. Not the simple images found 24 times in a second on the screen but rather with the recorded images and the way to manipulate them. I found HIDDEN fascinating because, during each scene, I had to discover whether the point of view of the camera was objective or subjective. Highly recommended.

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Subtly excellent

This is a brilliant film--many of the scenes allude to a larger metaphor regarding French colonialism and colonialist attitudes, including the more obvious current western/non-western tensions. The director does not let the minority position off the hook either: the Arab son appears to deny what it seems he must have done; and in a movie where nothing is insignificant, a brief altercation between lead character Georges and a black cyclist reveal that both were fantastically out of line. Another time the film makes a subtle highlight of Georges, serious topical-intellectual talk show host, in a film studio editing his own live interviews--he is literally re-writing history and applying power by manipulating information for his own purposes. Scenes like this are throughout "Cache": nothing can be taken for granted. The director has studied his Kubrick and Bunuel and come up with a very timely classic.

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subtle and thought-provoking

Far from being "pretentious," this film was very true to life in its pacing, its unadorned visuality, and its reluctance to give clear-cut answers. It would have been very easy for the director to turn this plot into an overblown thriller of the kind some reviewers seem to have wanted, but I'm glad he didn't.

My criticism is that the film remains something of an intellectual exercise, failing to delve into the characters' psyches as far as it could have done. The dynamics of the husband-and-wife relationship could have helped to supply this psychological depth, but it remains underdeveloped - and I was VERY disappointed to see Juliette Binoche so underused when she was one of the reasons I wanted to see the movie in the first place. (What were they thinking?)

Even so, "Cache" left me thinking, and I can't say that of very many films - hence the 4 stars.

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