Live...or Memorex?
Review: Caché

By Steve Warren
Staff Reviewer

When does he find time for all that reading?

The old question, "Is it live or is it Memorex?" arises frequently as you watch Caché, Michael Haneke's thriller that's been the toast of Europe, from the Cannes Film Festival to the European Film Awards. As good as it is, it's unlikely to repeat that success in America , where we like things spelled out for us more than they are here.

And of course Americans harbor no guilt about mistreating immigrant populations as the French have done with Algerians, so we're liable to miss the point.

Caché is an unsettling film about the things that unsettle us, and things that should unsettle us but perhaps don't. It begins, while the credits are displayed in a way that would never fly with American agents, guilds and unions, with a long, static shot of a building.

It seems like a typical establishing shot but turns out to be a kind of surveillance tape that's been delivered to the occupants of the building, Georges (Daniel Auteuil) and Anne Laurent (Juliette Binoche), with no explanation. They can't account for it except perhaps a prank on the part of a friend of their 12-year-old son Pierrot (Lester Makedonsky), who is "battling puberty."

Georges hosts a literary discussion program on TV. Anne works for a publishing firm. Pierrot is on the swim team at school.

The first tape is followed by a second, wrapped in a crude drawing of a mouth spewing blood. The drawing is repeated on cards sent to Georges at work and Pierrot at school. Phone calls come to the house asking for Georges but saying nothing else—not threatening, just unnerving; nothing for the police to act on. More tapes arrive, each revealing more intimate knowledge of Georges, his family and his past.

The key incident in his past occurred when Georges was six and involved Majid, the son of his family's Algerian servants. A tape leads him to the grown Majid (Maurice Bénichou), whom he hasn't seen in all these years but who immediately becomes his prime suspect. There's still been no crime so the police won't get involved.

While Georges becomes increasingly paranoid, Anne is more upset about the effect—that he's obviously hiding things from her—than the cause. If someone is attempting to disrupt their happy home life they're succeeding.

After fooling us a few times with shots that turn out to be tapes, Haneke can really mess with us. By shooting most scenes with a stationary camera he keeps us wondering whether we're watching things as they happen or as they've been recorded. One such scene may explain the later actions of a character who is not known to have seen any tapes.

Caché sets up a good mystery but doesn't solve it, which keeps you from forgetting the questions and issues it's raised as soon as you return to your comfortable life. It's got a good fix on what frightens us (loss of privacy) and what shocks us (blood) and uses both judiciously to good effect.

The final scene contains what may be another clue, but I'm surprised at how many intelligent critics completely missed the interaction of two characters in that long shot. If they didn't see it in a theater, no one will see it on video, where Caché should never be watched.

Steve Warren is a local actor and film reviewer. His reviews can also be seen weekly in the Sunday Paper.

Caché
Rating: (3 out of 4)

Directed by: Michael Haneke
Written by: Michael Haneke
Starring: Daniel Auteuil, Juliette Binoche, Maurice Bénichou, Annie Girardot, Bernard Le Coq, Walid Afkir, Lester Makedonsky

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