ViewGuide

Created May 01, 2008 06:02PM PST • Edited May 01, 2008 06:02PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   The viewer almost masquerades as a mysterious stalker in Michael Haneke’s moody Caché (aka Hidden), in which television personality Georges Laurent (Daniel Auteuil) and his wife Anne (Juliette Binoche) are harassed by mysterious VHS tapes that threaten to reveal something dark about Georges past. Until the identity of the villain is revealed (in essence, their identity doesn’t matter at all) Haneke’s film hauntingly has the VHS tapes the bourgeois couple receive mirror the viewpoint taken by the camera lens in certain points throughout the movie, intentionally seating the viewer in the same chair as the seemingly-obsessive stalker, making himself another motion picture that analyses the relationship between a movie patron and cinematic violence as well as the artifice that can come with the film industry’s output. If the film itself suffers from a disappointingly slow-moving threat and an awkward introduction of flashback sequences to the pivotal points of Georges’ lives, Caché gets a message across and works well enough as a pulpy crime mystery to keep the viewer attentive and engrossed. Director Haneke is helped by his lead performers, with both Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche giving fearful, humanity-laced performances that allow the viewer to side with them even as revelations are repeatedly made about Daniel that don’t necessarily paint him as a sympathetic person. Nor is he sympathetic to the culprit when they meet, and instead is more desperate to keep himself and his family safe – this in several respects. Also refreshing about Haneke’s French film is the learned subletly with which it gets its myriad points across. As is, Haneke shoots and writes his film with more restraint than his own Funny Games and less broadness that allows it to come across more consumable and alternately unsettling. Its self-awareness is there but not the most crucial point. What is left after the fact is an intelligent, worthwhile stumble through gritty territory that might still have benefitted from a few cuts (these in the more innocuous, filler sequences) and something more high-octane in the plotting.

4. Acting

   Really Great 4.5

   Excellent performances all-round.

5. Male Stars Really Great 4.5

6. Female Stars Really Great 4.5

7. Female Costars Really Great 4.5

8. Male Costars Really Great 4.5

10. Film

    Very Good 3.5

    Quality direction, learned exchanges of dialogue, minimal musical influence and excellent, creepy visuals.

11. Direction Very Good 3.5

12. Play Great 4.0

13. Music Good 3.0

14. Visuals Really Great 4.5
15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.8

    Has scatterings of just about everything, but little of it extreme (save, perhaps, for a single scene).

17. Sex Innocent 1.1

18. Violence Fierce 2.1

19. Rudeness Salty 2.1

21. Reality

    Glib 1.9

    Haneke’s style lends a glibness to proceedings in the “no fourth wall” allusions, but mostly plays it down the middle with a measured sense of reality.

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.9

23. Biological Glib 1.9

24. Physical Glib 1.9