Caché

Michael Haneke is one of the most interesting filmmakers in contemporary cinema. His Funny Games is by far the most horrifying movie ever made, a work of sheer genius that I recommend no one ever see, and his The Piano Player combined perversion and disgust in ways that had previously only been found in The Starr Report. With Caché, he tackles a new issue: boredom. This is probably the most intentionally boring film I’ve ever seen. Ostensibly about a married couple who find they are being stalked, Caché is really more about an audience’s expectations. When Georges (Daniel Auteuil) and Anne (Juliette Binoche) receive surveillance tapes of their house in unmarked packages, they become suspicious and paranoid. When their son fails to return home, they panic. When Georges withholds information about a childhood misdeed, their marriage teeters. But for the most part, nothing happens. Stationary shots of buildings, meaningless conversation and unfulfilled tension are the rule in this film. It’s an interesting experiment, but not for the audience.