Cach
Paranoia grips a bourgeois European family when a series of menacing videotapes begin turning up on their doorstep in Piano Teacher director Michael Haneke's dark drama. From the outside, Georges (Daniel Auteuil), Anne (Juliette Binoche), and son Pierrot (Lester Makedonsky) are the typical middle-class European family, but when a series of mysterious videotapes accompanied by morbid drawings reveal that someone has been monitoring their house, Georges begins to suspect that his past has come back to haunt him. It was during France's occupation of Algeria that Georges wronged a young Algerian boy named Majid (Maurice Bénichou), and as the enraged father and husband begins tracking down his former friend, the line between victim and predator becomes increasingly blurred.
Director: Michael Haneke
Starring: Daniel Auteuil, Juliette Binoche, Maurice Benichou, Annie Girardot, Lester Makedonsky
A perplexing and disturbing film of great effect.
The picture moves with stealth, enjoying its own thriller-ness as hints are laid and mislaid. There's a sense that Hitchcock is hovering in the background and cheering for Auteuil, who musters all his French superstardom to play a man having his mask of blandness torn off.
Maurice Bénichou does the most heartbreaking work in the movie, playing a friend of Georges's. It's a character and a performance I'll have a tough time getting out of my dreams.
A psychological suspense drama of the utmost rigor and originality.
Laurent's crime is really the crime of being European and conquering people of color. That understood, Cache is brilliant.
Best Foreign Film
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences of Argentina (2006)
Best Non-American Film (Bedste ikke-amerikanske film)
Bodil Awards (2007)
Best Foreign Independent Film
British Independent Film Awards (2006)
Best Foreign-Language Film
Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards (2006)
Michael Haneke
Cannes Film Festival (2005)
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