Review #57 of 365
Film: Caché [R] 117 minutes
WIP: $11.25
When 1st Seen: 8 March 2006
Where Viewed: Landmark Esquire, Denver, CO
Time: 6:45 p.m.
Review Dedicated to: Franck B. from Calabasas, CA
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DVD |
First things first, got to let you know that if you can get in to see the French film Caché you should, but you should be prepared. Remember how you felt when you came out of seeing The Sixth Sense? Well, you are going to feel the opposite after Caché. Ok, that’s all I can say without revealing major plot points which I am sworn not to do. I might cheat a little and say that is a good thing that Michael Haneke directed his own script—nobody but the author himself should have had to deal with directing this film. And, this makes, what, about three or four films in a row with some sort of plot issues—at least this time the subtitles were not also haunted at they were in Night Watch, so I think I caught everything. Though I know there will be some non-French-speaking people who may feel that they must have lost something in translation.
So, the film starts out with a French TV Book Review Show host named Georges Laurent (Daniel Auteuil) and his book publisher wife Anne (Juliette Binoche—not to be confused with French Canadian actress, Geneviève Bujold whom ‘Star Trek: Voyager’ fans will recall walked off the set of Voyager and was replaced, thankfully, by Kate Mulgrew who became Star Trek’s series first female captain!) receiving video surveillance tapes of their own house attached to creepy notes seemingly sketched by a child. The police are no help and neither are their friends. Things really start to get interesting, however, when Georges’s conscience starts to get the better of him and he begins to dream about and remember some of his childhood actions against a young Algerian boy named Majid who his parents had agreed to adopt after his parents were mysteriously killed by the French government but with whom Georges does not wish to share any familial attention. So, between not getting any help from the police, his mother, nor his friends, a son that has real authority issues, and an endless supply of tapes, cards and harassing phone calls, and George’s increasingly guilty feelings about his past, this family has a lot with which to contend.
The plot is thoroughly engrossing, the acting sufficient, and the filming bore some minor comparisons to that of Alfred Hitchcock, in fact, I thought I was watching an update of Rear Window for the first five minutes of the film. I really wanted to get to the bottom of what was going on—the film is captivating and very intriguing. It drew me right in and held me through the closing credits. I have a feeling that people are going to spend decades dissecting this film. There is as much here as in a few episodes of LOST (the hit ABC show which is, in my opinion, a must-see show). And, there are some striking similarities between LOST and this film. After I publish, I am going to enjoy reading what people are saying about this film and what they have come up with as answers to some of the bedeviling mysteries such as why does Georges and Anne’s son, Pierrot (Lester Makedonsky) so loathe and disrespect his mother? Lester Makedonsky is a good little actor, by the way. In any case, Caché is a very good movie with a very frustrating ending due to the lack of tidy closure we have grown to expect. It is quite possible that Caché is supposed to be like the Japanese poem of which Sayuri speaks in Memoirs of a Geisha where the poet carves the words in stone and then scratches them out so no one will ever be able to read it and discover its true meaning.
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Cache (Hidden) [DVD](2005) DVD
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