Hide and Seek

Sometimes I think it's better to write a review much after watching the film. At that point, exact details are fuzzy, and you're not as likely to recap the film. I'll try this out on a review of Cache.

1984 posited this idea of a "Big Brother" who was watching you. This was meant to be a menacing presence, where you lose sense of privacy, even as "Big Brother" was meant to be friendly. Would Orwell have thought that people wouldn't mind giving up privacy? People want to be on Real World or Big Brother where everyone is watched. Who wouldn't mind giving up privacy if there's fame.

Michael Haneke's Cache is modern Orwellian vision of surveillance. A husband and wife begin to receive videotapes. Someone is clearly spying on them. Why?

Haneke can take the rather staid scene of the exterior of a Paris apartment an infuse it with a sense of dread. Indeed, for the first half hour, one gets exhausted in a body clench.

As much as this works as a kind of thriller, it might not have been more than an exercise in audience manipulation if the relationship between husband and wife didn't work so well. It feels like Auteil and Binoche are husband and wife, bickering about what to do, questioning what the husband's past is all about. It's easy to forget both actors are highly prolific (the best French actors seem to star in lots of films, more so than American actors of similar caliber). Haneke could have made a film just about family drama and made something highly effective.

There's one kicker of a scene that leaves you breathless as Haneke lingers and lingers on a scene that comes out of nowhere. There are scenes like this in other films and yet they are part of the imaginary landscape.

Haneke explores a theme that Egoyan often deals with, which is video. Egoyan's films mainly have actors interacting with the medium. In Calendar, Egoyan plays a photographer who looks at videos of his wife. In Speaking Parts, the woman who's life a film is being made about looks at a video of her dead brother when he was alive.

Although the video is watched by husband and wife, Haneke compels you to watch it too, to see yourself as the couple would see this, to put yourself in their place. He's much more participitory than Egoyan.

I watched some of Funny Games and this film seems more accomplished, mostly, I suspect because one can sympathize with the couple.

Grade: A-.