After watching La Pianiste by Michael Haneke, I knew that his cinema would have more in store for me, and my expectations were exceeded when watching Cahcè. Haneke now in my eyes seems like a truly interesting director, and I’ve just got to ask myself why I haven’t seen any of his films before, or really heard about him.
Usually I don’t like to discuss plot in these little blurbs, but I feel it is important here to get my feelings across about the film. A married couple receives a videotape and some disturbing drawings. The videotapes are filmed outside their house, and show them as they arrive at home. The husband, Georges, notes that he can’t understand why he didn’t notice the camera. For the rest of the film, the lead character is concerned with discovering who the sender of the videotapes is. However, as I found, the identity of the sender is really not important. As the film progresses, the tension between the couple increase, and buried feelings of guilt emerge. It’s a really good dissection of the coldness and shallowness that emerge in such middleclass marriages, but it also deals with cultural guilt and specifically that of France, but I won’t go into it too much, as it might ruin the film for prospective viewers. Regardless, the film slowly unfolds layers of the character, we are given blurred and ambiguous moments of his childhood. Are they true memories or his imagination? This ambiguity is one of the strengths of the film, what gives it its certain character. On the surface it seems like a normal thriller, but it proves itself to be something more, with layers of comments on the characters lives and cinema itself. As a genre exercise it also plays with the expectations of the audience, and will many times leave us astray.
One thing I found interesting is that the shots from the videotapes are shot identically to the film. Usually, the videotapes would have an amateur look to them and look grainy. There could be many implications by this, and I don’t this is an accident. The way the film is set up, there are many times you would think that what you see is a new videotape, but then it is revealed to be a normal shot. It might be a comment on the filmmaker’s power over his characters. It also creates a feeling of alienation, the audience will forget the escapism of the genre and remember that they are watching a film. It also shows us the acute details we are privileged of the characters very private lives, as they feel the videotapes are very unnerving, it almost seems as if they are aware that we are watching them. It’s a very simple technique that Haneke is using here, but also very powerful. I do like it a lot when directors use methods like these, to force the audience to question their relationship with the characters on screen. As said, the lead character is brought to feelings of shame, or at least it’s acknowledged that he should feel shame. This is paralleled to a national level and France specifically. It’s hard to mention the details without ruining the plot, however, I do think it works quite well, and so the film at the same time as being a good characters study, also becomes political.
There’s not much I can say about the directing without repeating myself from what I wrote on La Pianiste. As earlier, it’s very consistent and creates a true form in the film. I feel the cinematography is used even better here though, at times feels almost black and white. Its sharp and the colour black is often brought forward, giving the images an almost chilly coldness. It does well to help the portrayal of the family. Haneke also uses similar long takes here, dwelling on certain images, although slightly less than in La Pianiste. The directing here is not as direct as in La Pianiste, and grows on playing with ambiguity. In the end, Cachè is not about the plot, but what is happening to the characters due to it. Usually in such films, the plot is the main point of the film, but here it is simply a device to stir up the characters, and unveil their past. Herein lays the beauty of Cachè, a truly constructed film that could be analyzed to every frame and still remain ambiguous. Cachè means hidden, but what is hidden? The sender of the videotapes, the feelings of the main character, the camera of Haneke? All these questions will be unanswered after you watch the film, but they still remain fascinating to answer.
I thought Cachè was a marvellous film, a truly great contemporary piece. It will probably be remembered and studied for years to come. Its themes are evocative, its structure and intents complex. A film I probably will come back to many times.
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