Cache Photo

Cache

Starring: Juliette Binoche, Daniel Auteuil, Maurice Benichou, Annie Girardot, Lester Makedonsky

Directed by: Michael Haneke

RS: 3.5of 4 Stars

2005 Sony Pictures Classics Drama

With all the movies crowded in at the end of the year, you may have missed this haunting fever dream from Austrian master Michael Haneke (The Piano Teacher). Get cracking. Cache (French for "hidden") casts a spell that grips you and won't let go. The film works as a provocation, on a personal and a political level. Daniel Auteuil is powerfully good as Georges, the host of a literary TV talk show in Paris, with Anne (a coolly imperious Juliette Binoche), just the right chic wife, and Pierott (Lester Makedonsky), just the right preteen son, to go with their tres cher home. Crashing into their serenity comes a surveillance tape of their home, followed by drawings of violent images. Who's watching them? And what for? Haneke unearths an Algerian man (Maurice Benichou) whom Georges betrayed in his youth. And lines of dysfunction in this perfect family begin to emerge. By the final riveting and static images, fear and guilt have become almost palpable. You won't be able to look away.