Believe me. I'm the biggest Mikael Haneke fan ever but his newest was so esoteric and essay-like. Its one of those films that's so autonomous the viewers of it are merely an afterthought. It follows Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche who are a boring upper-class French couple suddenly under siege by some unseen stalker who videotapes the outside of their house for hours and then leaves the tape on the doorstep wrapped in childlike drawings depicting blood spewing out of mouths and chicken necks.
Haneke's tricks so to speak (his labored pace, punctuated by severe acts of violence) are fully exposed in this story. In THE PIANO TEACHER and TIME OF THE WOLF they were cleverly hidden by Isabelle Huppert's performances and pulpy or sci-fi undercurrents. But CACHE is essentially FUNNY GAMES without the shock value. Haneke returns to subjects that obviously fascinate him as a filmmaker which is the bourgeois and media-obsession. I saw it with a friend who pointed out that just the act showing someone what they are doing (no matter how mundane) can lead to the breakdown of relationships and sanity. With that in mind, some of Haneke's devices are splendid. Displaying the intial stalker videos using the enitre frame and the subsequent mise en scene in later disturbing interactions is borderline brilliant. It creates a wonderful sense of dread and forces us to question what is being filmed and what isn't. But scenes between Binoche's shrewish possibly unfaithful wife and Auteuil's boorish husband that take up a lot of the story fall rather flat and detract from the overall thrust of the narrative's suspense.
I very much enjoyed all this sadism because I'm a masochist. Also I've come to expect and appreciate it from Haneke. But CACHE left me feeling unsatisfied and more importantly un-haunted.
Bottom line: Definitely worth seeing eventually. But see THE PIANO TEACHER or TIME OF THE WOLF first if you haven't already. They will give you a better sense of what you are in for and what Haneke is capable of.
5 comments:
okay, just saw cache yesterday. who shot the videos?
i love this guy no matter what... but i have no idea.
well, this is an extremly late comment but i just watched the movie and here's my theory: i think it was the old immigrant guy's son and that he was in cahoots with Daniel Auteuil's son. Aren't they talking to each other at the end of the movie on the school steps - or did i just imagine that? it would kinda fit with the whole french/algerian relationship/history message, as in the younger generation punishing(?) them for what happened. Normally, a movie like this, i would watch again but I don't think that's going to happen... not my favorite of his either.
I just saw it on video and this is a great film. Along with Brick and Half Nelson these are wonderful experiences. Acting was superb. Directing immaculate (yes, it was Hitchcock). Such suspense and the larger issues of treatment of Algerians in France. What a treat to see film as it needs to be made.
I'm writing this almost a year after the fact but I had to add this:
there is a theory that the person who made and sent the videos is none other than Haneke himself who is "breaking the fourth wall" in order to do so. It's a delicious theory and the one with which I most agree. One scene that especially seals this deal for me is when Auteuil answers the door during the dinner party, walks outside for a moment and, upon walking back in, trips on a new tape, one that has hypothetically just been put there by Haneke who is filming the whole damn thing as it is happening (assuming that Auteuil would have seen it or tripped over it on his way out)!
Like you and other posters here, I wasn't blown away by this movie...until I did the research and encountered theories such as this one. Now I have a whole other level of respect for it and will definitely be watching it again at some point. Cheers!
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