Movie Review 2: Caché

By Frank H. Woodward Dec 23, 2005, 18:45 GMT

Georges (Auteil), a television talk show host, and his wife Anne (Binoche), are living the perfect life of modern comfort and security. One day, their idyll is disrupted in the form of a mysterious videotape that appears on their doorstep. On it they are being filmed by a hidden camera from across the street with no clues as to who shot it, or why. As more tapes arrive containing images ...more

Those expecting CACHE to be a straight up thriller about a family who fall victim of a mysterious stalker may discover something else.  Director Michael Haneke isn't interested in the mechanics of suspense so mush as he is by the tensions of the hidden being exposed.

This should come as no surprise to those who speak French.  CACHE, for all those non-Gallic speakers out there, literally means "hidden" and Haneke plays with the parameters of this word as much as he can in two hours.

The comfortable lives of talk show host Georges (Daniel Auteuil) and his wife Anne (Juliette Binoche) descend into paranoia when they receive a series of videotapes.  Someone is filming them with no clue as to how or why.  Is the tape from a fan?  Or has it something to do with a part of Georges past that he has concealed from everyone including himself?

CACHE's design is subtlety at its finest.  Georges and Anne, like it or not, are the subjects of someone's private reality show.  To echo this, production designers Emmanuel de Chauvigny & Christoph Kanter employ simple motifs like having the set of Georges' TV show mirror his actual living room.  Haneke's camera work (by way of cinematographer Christian Berger) is not so obvious.

Lingering long shots hold invisible effects especially as they are repeated throughout the film.  We first see such shots (like an anonymous point of view of a car driving down a city street) when Georges and Anne view the videotapes that are left for them.  When we see them again, we're momentarily unsure if the tape is being replayed or if we are witnessing a first hand experience by one of the characters.  In his investigations, Georges visits the exact locations shown to him on the tapes.  By reusing the exact shots, Haneke makes us wonder if these tapes are simply recording Georges' actions or causing them to occur like fate.

As if this disorientation weren't enough, the shots also ratchet up our own unease by not giving us any cinematic indication as to what should draw our eye.  Uncovering the hidden in Haneke's compositions could have come off like a WHERE'S WALDO? adaptation if not for the simmering performances of Auteuil and Binoche.

Daniel Auteuil has always been a charismatic personality on screen in films such as APRES VOUS and THE GIRL ON THE BRIDGE.  In his portrayal of Georges, however, Auteuil uses his good natured charisma to mask wells of guilt.  The political nature of Georges' hidden past (something to do with French-Algerian prejudices is all I'll reveal)  aren't as tragic as the sags and cracks left behind on his once carefree face.  Juliette Binoche is also known for her charisma, but, in CACHE, she supports the anger of the situation in what is primarily Auteuil's story.

Someone once said that the difference between a European film and an American film is that a European film deals with internal conflict while American fare is all about external conflict.  In the case of CACHE, this may be true.  Though Haneke also directed FUNNY GAMES (another story about a type of home invasion), CACHE is far less brutal than that film's sadism.  Except for one genuine shock moment, a lot of the film's emotion is of the bottled up variety and the film's pace is quite deliberate.  CACHE surely lives up to its name... a psychological study hidden in a high concept thriller.