After a credits roll that unspools like a police teletype, the first dialogue that we hear in Michael Haneke's Caché [Hidden] is "Alors? [Well?]" The emotional temperature rarely rises above that simmer in this subtle and chilling psychological thriller/mystery that takes place in the leafy 13th arrondissement confines of the rue Brillat-Savarin.

A person or persons unknown is sending silent videotapes of Georges and Anne going about their lives, sometimes accompanied by a childishly-drawn scene of violence. The tapes are banal, static, like the blandest of establishing shots in a second-rate movie—and yet, with no more than that, not even background music, Haneke spins up the tension into something oddly beautiful. Certain other shots, among them flashbacks into Georges's ill-advised past, extend the lashed-to-the-tripod esthetic: a refreshment for eyes glazed by too many handheld shots in other movies.

It's not important who's accountable for the tapes. The damage done to Georges (the ever-haunted Daniel Auteuil) is completely self-inflicted. He lies to his wife, he shirks responsibility, he fails to report a crime to the police, and thus he digs his own grave of despair.

Georges is a talk-show host on a program that reviews recent books. We see him edit an interview sequence to sharpen it, to point up the controversy. In much the same way, we see him edit and suppress childhood memories to suit his present needs. In a way, the film recalls the great movies from the 1960s and later about the technology of looking, Blow up and The Conversation. No matter how dispassionate and objective the camera or the microphone may seem to be, there is always a redactor who decides what shall be recorded.

 posted: 1:19:42 PM