Caché (Hidden)

[MacGuffin]

Trailer

International Trailer

Release Date: December 23, 2005

Cast: Juliette Binoche, Daniel Auteuil, Maurice Bénichou, Annie Girardot, Bernard Le Coq, Walid Afkir, Daniel Duval, Nathalie Richard, Denis Podalydès, Aïssa Maïga

Director: Michael Haneke

Premise: Georges, who hosts a TV literary review, receives packages containing videos of himself with his family -- shot secretly from the street -- and alarming drawings whose meaning is obscure. He has no idea who may be sending them. Gradually, the footage on the tapes becomes more personal, suggesting that the sender has known Georges for some time. Georges feels a sense of menace hanging over him and his family but, as no direct threat has been made, the police refuse to help.

[edison]

and for those who missed it in the other thread, this won best foreign film from the LA Film Critics

[ono]

See also: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116922/

[bonanzataz]

See also: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116922/

shut up. the plotlines are slightly similar, but lynch and haneke share totally different sentimentalities. i have been waiting for this movie since it was announced. i would've seen it at the nyff, but, coincidentally, lynch was doing his transcendental meditation crap and i had to go to that instead.

[w/o horse]

Spoilers.

The ending was fucking the most abrupt ending there has been ever, right?  It caught me completely off guard and I loved it for that.

It was an experience.  It was a French experience.  It was a Michael Haneke experience.  Tragic tense and dense moments.  Great acting and control.  The pace was bizarre and worked.  I don't think that it was ambituous enough to be categorized as great, but it is what it is.

I fucking loved the end.

B-.

Not the slightest bit like Lost Highway.

[bonanzataz]

if you loved it so much, where does the b- come from?

this is a great progression for haneke. his movies seem to get better and better with every one he makes. they all send such strong messages to an audience without ever beating the audience over their heads with them or talking down to them. this movie is far subtler than his previous attempts and has been getting sold out shows in nyc the past few weeks. catch it if it comes near you. especially if you're white.

[w/o horse]

if you loved it so much, where does the b- come from?

I don't think that it was ambitious enough to be categorized as great, but it is what it is.

Minus a random extra u in ambitious.

[bonanzataz]

no, it's not blatantly ambitious, but the subjects that are tackled in this movie are done with such finesse and ease that the subtext isn't entirely apparent until after it's done with. for that, i think it's incredibly ambitious. it's hard to make a movie about race relations that never comes out and says "this is a movie about race relations." i never saw crash, but from some of the things i've heard mentioned on this board, that movie attempts to be ambitious in its storytelling. haneke's direction is amazing, b/c his technique takes a backseat to decent storytelling. it's not about creatively put together shots or cool use of music or writing/direction which seems to shout "this is the most amazing movie ever made and you should take note!" mirroring the premise of the movie, the audience isn't experiencing everything with intense, hyper-emotional melodrama as many movies would show it, they're watching it from a voyeuristic perspective. that's what makes it so unique and so good. far better than a b- in my opinion. i'm going to see this one again before it leaves theaters (which, from what i've heard from friends trying to go see it and finding out that the next two showings are sold out weeks after its release, won't be for a long time).

[w/o horse]

Finesse is such a fine word to use.  Your enthusiasm for the film makes me enthusiastic, but I disagree that it's incredibly ambitious.  It's treading much the same waters that Antonioni did, or even Tarkovsky, Bunuel,  Jarmusch, and definitely Greenaway and Egoyan.  I imagine the NYC crowd is having a good time unwrapping the film's layers: solving the case of the tape, the unfaithful wife, the intentions of the son (both), the amorality of the situation, etc.  That I fucking love too.  And the genre bending of course.

B- is pretty abritrary I guess.  Perhaps because I'm so desperate for films, especially contemporary, to take me places that I haven't been before it causes me to be harder on the more subtle and the more outrageous and I am missing out.  Cache was certainly a good film.

[bonanzataz]

B- is pretty abritrary I guess. 

i know. i just want people to see this movie, b/c i don't think haneke gets enough credit.

[Pubrick]

moral of the story: enuff with grading movies like they're homework. you both ended up saying great things about the movie which made me way more interested to see it than the trailer, but the B- thing is just irrelevant for any serious review. if you need to summarize your thoughts about a movie in letter format or out of five, don't bother writing anything at all so i can just skip your review.

the rating invalidates the writing and the writing confuses the rating.

[Astrostic]

I saw this in Boston last night.  Really Great, I can't stop thinking about it.  It reminded me a lot of the 1988 version of The Vanishing with it's pacing and build up.  I haven't been as satisfied at the end of a movie as I was with this one in a long time.  Maybe it's just because I "saw" what was to be seen in the last shot and nobody else in the theatre did, but my heart was racing as the credits rolled.  Thumbs Up, i need to see other films by Haneke.

[godardian]

B- is pretty abritrary I guess.

i know. i just want people to see this movie, b/c i don't think haneke gets enough credit.

I second that. It's a priority. What you said about being white, too (especially now, whether you're French or American or whatever). Our own privilege is "hidden" from us, and this movie is extremely observant on that front.

[Gamblour.]

SPOILERS

If there's such a thing as too subtle, this film is it. Between the videotapes, the children, and whatever connection lies between, this movie spells out far less than it should. I can't believe everyone is so adamantly stamping this as a movie about race. Were the tapes some sort of red herring to get me thinking about racism? Because the movie places such a big priority on the tapes, the tapes, why would it want to be a thriller about tapes on the surface when it's really about race? That didn't work. And even as I saw it, as a film about the effects and consequences of a childhood event, facing it all of a sudden in the present, that didn't work either. As a thriller about tapes, it sure doesn't work. This movie isn't about anything, the ending is a cop out. I'm not going to read anything more into it because the pieces just aren't there. The infidelity of the wife is mentioned, but a kiss on the hand is supposed to get me chatting away about what was really going on? The kid going missing is interesting, but the dad sums it up as going through puberty, and if it's really about his mother, we get NOTHING to suggest any validity. If not seeing it is our way of being voyeurs, well that stinks, bad cinema. The only thing that completely amazed me was the uninterrupted suicide. Technically and cinematically, that was incredible.

[Ghostboy]

No, all the pieces are there....the ones you need, in any case. The tapes aren't a red herring, but they might be a bit of a subterfuge; they're a metaphor for perception than anything else (the mystery behind them ultimately doesn't matter all that much - they might as well be making themselves). The film isn't so much concerned with racism as it is (and this is true for the majority of Haneke's work, with the exception of 'The Piano Teacher') classism. Consider the recent events in Paris and apply them to this film, and it all might start to make more sense. Echoing the sentiments of Astrostic, it's one of the most satisfying films I've seen in a long time.