Caché

“Caché”
Michael Haneke, 2005

In “Caché,” a TV host named Georges (Daniel Auteuil) and his wife, Anne Laurent (Juliette Binoche), receive a bizarre tape, which depicts their house being photographed from an unknown location. The anonymous creator of said tape has wrapped it within a drawing of a child vomiting blood. It's extremely unsettling, but when the couple go to the police for help, they are told that they are on their own – unless they are actually attacked, of course. From there, we watch Georges and Anne as they try to go about their lives in a normal manner, even while outside forces are striving to disrupt such routines.

The title, “Caché,” translates to “hidden,” which is a theme that trickles down through the entire film. The director Michael Haneke constructs his film around a series of interactions between his characters, all of which are played out in their entirety. It is an engaging method that both belies and accentuates this central motif, because while watching these characters, we get the sense that there is much more to them than meets the eye, and that merely witnessing their interactions doesn't quite do them justice. Georges, for instance, is trying to hide the fact that the anonymous person who sent the tapes is probably the son of a servant during his childhood, who is angry at him for unstated reasons. Yet he lies to Anne about what he really knows. Why does he do this? Georges tells her that he doesn't want to hurt her; he is really saying that he doesn't want to resurrect memories that will hurt him.

“Caché” is fascinating because of its very ambiguity, because of this tension that arises when we are, at least ostensibly, made witnesses to everything that occurs, yet are forced to extrapolate what exactly is going on. But such an approach has the unfortunate effect of making it difficult to consistently connect, on an emotional level, with the characters. This is particularly apparent in the narrative concerning Georges and the anonymous person. That narrative culminates in an utterly random explosion of violence that elicited – at least from this viewer – a chuckle, rather than a gasp of horror. Perhaps this is what Haneke was trying to go for: we can't really react well to such a situation, because the connection between Georges and other characters always will be, for us, the uninitiated viewer, poorly developed. What Haneke ultimately appears to be telling us is that we can't truly know anyone, much less a couple of protagonists in a two-hour film.

Rating: 8

First Viewed: 11/7/08, on DVD - IMDb