Caché (2005)

Directed by

Michael Haneke

Genre

drama film, thriller film

Country

Germany, France, Austria, Italy

Runtime

1h 57m

Rated

R

Rating

7.0 of 10 from 1,276 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A French couple starts receiving anonymous videotapes that show their house under surveillance. The tapes send the husband digging into painful childhood memories tied to an Algerian orphan his parents once planned to adopt.

unsettlingtenseslow-burncerebralbleakatmosphericsuspensefulambiguousparanoid

What happens

Caché (French: [kaʃe]), also known as Hidden, is a 2005 neo-noir psychological thriller film written and directed by Michael Haneke and starring Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche. The plot follows an upper-middle-class French couple, Georges (Auteuil) and Anne (Binoche), who are terrorised by anonymous tapes that appear on their front porch and seem to show the family is under surveillance. Clues in the videos point to Georges' childhood memories, and his resistance to his parents' adopting an Algerian orphan named Majid, who was sent away. Shot in Paris and Vienna in 2004, the film is an international co-production of France, Austria, Germany and Italy. Haneke wrote the screenplay with Auteuil and Binoche in mind, and with a concept of exploring guilt and childhood. When he learned of the French government's decades-long denial of the 1961 Seine River massacre, he incorporated memories of the event into his story. Caché opened at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival to critical acclaim for the performances and Haneke's direction. Its plot ambiguities raised considerable discussion. The film has been interpreted as an allegory about collective guilt and collective memory, and as a statement on France's Algerian War and colonialism in general. The film won three awards at Cannes, including Best Director; five European Film Awards, including Best Film; and other honours. It was controversially disqualified for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Caché has been regarded in the years since its release as one of the great films of the 2000s, included in BBC's 100 Greatest Films of the 21st Century. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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