Caché
2005
Director: Michael Haneke
Starring: Daniel Auteuil, Juliette Binoche, Maurice Bénichou
I don’t like to know everything about a film before I see it, but I like to know the basics: stars, genre, director, at the most a vague outline of the story. All I knew of Caché was that it starred Juliette Binoche (who rocks) and, in the first sentence of the DVD jacket, it was a “psychological thriller.” That was good enough for me, I like psychological thrillers, but that was all I knew.
Then the "directed by Haneke" message hit me, and I realized that, uh, yeah, I really had no idea what I gotten myself into.
Even knowing it was a “psychological thriller,” therefore meant to be, well, thrilling, left me feeling completely blindsided.
This movie freaked me the eff out.
I don’t want to talk too much about the plot (even Roger Ebert, who spoils films fully and freely, managed to write one of his Great Movie essays on this without giving anything of significance away). The main characters are Georges Laurent (Auteuil) and his wife Anne (Binoche). He is the host of a television book discussion program running on public television in Paris, she is a publisher. They have an adolescent son, Pierrot. The film opens with the discovery that someone has been filming them. They know this because videocassettes have been dropped at their front door showing the surveillance of the Laurents. Georges starts to suspect someone he used to know, someone from his past, Majid (Bénichou). The cassettes keep coming, egging Georges and Anne on, keeping them uncomfortably and aggressively aware that they are being watched.
