Caché
	(out of four)
	Sony Picture Classics
	Written and Directed by Michael Haneke
	Starring Daniel Auteuil, Juliette Binoche, Maurice Bénichou, Annie Girardot, Bernard Le Coq, Walid Afkir, Lester Makedonsky, Daniel Duval, Nathalie Richard, Denis Podalydès and Aïssa Maïga
	Rated R

In his masterpiece "Caché," Michael Haneke turns everyday life into a quiet but haunting nightmare of childhood guilt and distorts the cinematic lens in a way that is both disorienting and eloquently simple. To watch the film is to experience a faint but increasing pain and paranoia and be continually surprised. To consider its implications afterwards is to let these feelings follow you and grow as they circularly suggest and dismiss new ideas.

Haneke, an Austrian writer/director who has been working in France for his last several projects, made a name for himself with works of shocking violence, but his films of late have been simmering character studies like "The Piano Teacher." "Caché" (which translates to "Hidden"), his best film that I've seen, contains one very unexpected surprise—perhaps the most shocking scene in cinema this decade—but mostly moves slowly, gradually building its feelings of guilt and anger until they reach their conclusion.

Daniel Auteuil stars as Georges, the host of a literary discussion show on public television whose family starts receiving bizarre, unmarked tapes of their lives. His wife, Anne (Juliette Binoche), and son, Pierrot (Lester Makedonsky), have no idea who might be behind them, or how the perpetrator managed to conceal the camera so well.

The first tapes are bizarrely mundane, but as more arrive, they gradually start to include clues that suggest a deep knowledge of Georges's past—one looks out the window as a car travels to the farm where he grew up. They pose questions about how responsible people are for past actions, in terms of both personal childhood memories and large-scale politics. Georges's childhood effortss to (paraphrasing the film) keep what is his reflect a tragic event in recent French history.

Auteuil gives one of the best performances of his career as Georges deals with memories of the past and current stress while his charming facade starts to disintegrate. Georges could easily be an unlikable jerk, but Auteuil makes us understand and sympathize with his predicament, despite his foolish and/or pig-headed decisions.

Binoche is equally skilled in her portrayal of a character who is often left out of the loop and has to try to catch up with what is going on. She begins to see the hidden elements of her husband's personality and is uncomfortable dealing with them.

Haneke makes a few choices in his visual scheme that turn the film and the viewer in on themselves. The material on the videotapes isn't presented in the lower-resolution quality that is traditional when representing videotape, but exactly as the rest of the material in the film. The opening shot of the outside of the family's house only becomes known as a video when the characters break into the story and rewind. Haneke uses this switch tactic later in the film as well. The image is to clear to be shot from a window, Georges comments in the openening scene, but later a (presumably) non-video shot of Georges walking into a convenience store reveals itself, as the camera pans, to have been imperceptibly shot through a window.

Haneke uses wide angles and long takes, and, through compositions and post-scene revelations, it slowly becomes clear that almost any scene could be a recording. One scene in particular, between Anne and a family friend, seems to be a tape that a character has seen, but nothing in the film conclusively identifies it as such.

Many believe that an event "hidden" in the wide closing shot of the film unlocks the mystery of the tapes, but it seems more a message of hope for the future—the new generation overcoming the sins of the old—than an explanation.

Explaining the origin of the tapes isn't really possible. They certainly exist in the environment of the film, and not just in one character's mind, so there's no double-cross twist. But just as the film doesn't fulfill standard expectations with explanations, the effort to easily explain the tapes' existence will not yield definitive answers. The film takes place in a nightmare mindset, not the real world.

"Caché" isn't the kind of mystery that provides the typical closure expected with the genre. It's an exploration of the psyche that poses more questions as it answers others. When we wake from it, it lingers with us, and we wonder if its characters will ever stir from the hypnotic nightmare they're in.

jeremy [at] saltshakermagazine.com