Caché (film)

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Movie
German title Caché
Original title Caché
Country of production France ,
Austria ,
Germany ,
Italy
original language French
Publishing year 2005
length 115 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Michael Haneke
script Michael Haneke
production Margaret Ménégoz ,
Veit Heiduschka
camera Christian Berger
cut Michael Hudecek ,
Nadine Muse
occupation

Caché (“behind it”, “hidden”) is a feature film from 2005 by Austrian director Michael Haneke , who also wrote the screenplay. The thriller was produced by the film studios Les Films du Losange and Wega Film . Caché opened in Austria on November 18, 2005 . The film was launched in Germany on January 26, 2006.

action

The Parisian couple Georges and Anne Laurent seem to lead a comfortable and perfect life. Georges is the presenter of a popular literary program on French television, Anne works for a publishing house. Both live with their twelve-year-old son Pierrot, a talented swimmer, in a spacious townhouse on a quiet little street in the French capital. Nothing seems to be able to cloud the idyll , but Georges and Anne find a mysterious parcel on their doorstep. It contains a video cassette with views of their house, recorded over a period of two hours from across the street - a stranger secretly captured Georges and his family on film without leaving any clues as to their identity or motivation. This incident worries Georges more than Anne, who believes in a crazy fan of her husband as the author of the film. The Laurents do nothing at first, until a short time later they get a second videotape. This is accompanied by a rough drawing showing a child with blood flowing out of his mouth. Now anonymous calls are also increasing. Georges turns to the police, but they see no direct threat in the mysterious messages and therefore no reason to initiate an investigation.

Georges is becoming increasingly insecure and irritable, for example when he insults a young black boy in a near-accident on the street. At night, the TV presenter dreams of a bloodstained, dark-skinned boy who threatens him. Another video message shows Georges 'parents' house near Aix-en-Provence , so the unknown sender seems to know him well. Georges visits his mother there, they talk briefly about the Algerian boy Majid, who was part of the family for a short time as a small child, but then disappeared. Another volume to the Laurents shows an apartment block in Paris and a numbered apartment door. Georges has a suspicion that he does not want to share with Anne, which she resents to him. Georges goes to the council flat . There he meets Majid, who is about the same age, but initially does not recognize him; Majid, on the other hand, knows immediately who Georges is, he knows his TV program. He kindly stands up to Georges 'accusations and denies having anything to do with the stalking of Georges' family. Georges doesn't believe him, verbally threats him and leaves the apartment. A short time later, the Laurents received another video showing the conversation between the two. After Georges said to Anne that he had not found anyone in the council flat, he is now forced to tell about Majid. His parents had worked as guest workers on the farm of Georges' family while the war of independence against France was raging in their homeland . They did not return from a demonstration in Paris; they were possibly murdered in the course of the Paris massacre on October 17, 1961. Initially, Georges' parents wanted to adopt the Algerian boy, but Georges was jealous as a six-year-old and told lies about Majid, who was then taken away and sent to the orphanage. Georges rejects responsibility for what happened because he was still a child.

A little later, Georges is ordered to see his boss, who has also received a video of the conversation. Pierrot also received a card. Then the situation comes to a head when Pierrot doesn't come home after training as usual. At night the Laurents alert the police, Majid and his teenage son are arrested, but vehemently deny having done anything. Pierrot reappears the next day, he was only with a friend.

Majid asks Georges to come home a second time. At first, he again politely denies having anything to do with the videos. Then he draws a knife; in front of Georges' eyes he suddenly cuts his own throat and dies. Georges remains shocked and perplexed. He goes to the cinema, comes home late at night and tells Anne what happened, now and then. Georges had instigated Majid to chop off the head of a rooster on his parents' farm and then claimed to his parents that Majid had intended to scare him with it. That was the main reason why Georges' parents separated from Majid.

At his workplace, Georges is visited by Majid's son, who excitedly but politely insists on a conversation. Georges verbally attacks him too and rejects responsibility for Majid's suicide. The son, for his part, also credibly denies having anything to do with the videos. At the end of the conversation, he has what he really wanted: an impression of Georges, the man he blames for his father's misery. Georges goes home early, takes pills, draws the curtains and goes to bed.

At the end of the film you first see from a distance how Majid is taken away from Georges 'parents' house as a child against his will. Then, in the last scene, you see Majid's son and Pierrot talking to each other in the crowd in front of his school.

History of origin

Caché is based on an original script by Michael Haneke and was created by the film studios Les Films du Losange and Wega Film, in coproduction with Bavaria Film and BIM , and with the support of Canal Plus , arte France Cinéma , arte / WDR , the Filmstiftung Nordrhein- Westfalen , ORF , the Vienna Film Fund and the Austrian Film Institute . In his film, Haneke also refers to the events of 17./18. October 1961 ( Paris Massacre 1961 ), which the Austrian filmmaker a. a. played a key role in bringing Caché to the screen. Parisian police shot, killed and drowned around two hundred Algerians that night. Claude Bourdet, editor-in-chief of France-Observateur , learned of the massacre through shocked participants and made the news public. He was then prosecuted by the police chief for insulting officials and the incident silted up in the mills of justice. The then Paris police prefect Maurice Papon was already responsible for the arrest and removal of French Jews during the Vichy regime and therefore served a prison sentence from 1999. The massacre is a taboo subject in France and has been a. in Didier Daeninckx 's crime novel Karteileichen (original title: Meurtres pour mémoire) published in 1984 .

Other reasons for Haneke to make the film were, on the one hand, his interest in how a morally culpable adult in principle deals with having caused a tragedy as a guilty child. In the figure of George and his story, Haneke explores a variation on this theme in the film. On the other hand, Haneke was interested in working with actor Daniel Auteuil . Haneke says of Auteuil that, like Jean-Louis Trintignant in the past , there is something mysterious about him that always gives you the feeling that you have something to hide. Haneke wrote the role of George tailor-made for the actor, and for most of the other roles he already had the right cast in mind when writing.

The production costs of the film were estimated at eight million euros. The shooting took place mainly in Vienna and Paris. Apart from the outdoor shots, the film was made in studio sets for better control. Haneke kept strictly to the script and the storyboard he produced . The two main actors Juliette Binoche and Daniel Auteuil report in a making-of about different experiences with Haneke's acting management; While Binoche would have wished for more freedom in interpreting her role, Auteuil designed the picture of a puzzle in which he was only a little stone that, together with others, ultimately resulted in an image in the director's sense.

reception

Caché premiered on May 14, 2005 at the Cannes Film Festival , where he has won a number of awards and has been compared with works by American director David Lynch ( Mulholland Drive , Lost Highway ) . After another screening on July 2, 2005 in Paris and four days later at the La Rochelle Film Festival , Caché was shown at the US Telluride Film Festival . The official cinema release in France was on October 5, 2005. The Austrian cinema release took place on November 18, 2005 under the French original title Caché . By mid-2006 the film had over 800,000 visits in Austria, France, Belgium, Italy and Sweden (no figures are available for other countries) - the majority of them, around half a million, in France. In Austria, 60,000 cinema-goers saw the film.

Critics particularly praised Haneke's cool staging, which uses the Brechtian alienation effect in its film adaptation and incorporates the threatening video messages into the film's level of reality so skillfully that the viewer often cannot distinguish between these two narrative components. The French actors Auteuil and Binoche were also famous for their acting performances as a terrorized couple.

In 2016, Caché ranked 23rd in a BBC survey of the 100 most important films of the 21st century .

Reviews

  • "'Caché' is laid out like one of the paintings by MC Escher , where all the apparently connected paths and stairs cannot be connected on closer inspection, a spatial impossibility that is temporarily overridden by an optical illusion." ( Die Welt )
  • “With 'Caché', Michael Haneke made a fine film about guilt and the inability to atone ... Auteuil played that back in a terrific way, and Binoche gave her already extremely reduced role an unforgettable glow. Structurally, Haneke uses every means of reducing: First he slowed the pace against all expectation thriller, and the end result is the audience empty-handed. " ( Der Tagesspiegel )
  • "Despite this antipathy in the lead role, Haneke manages to grippingly describe how the lurking threat is shattering Georges and his family more and more and forcing him to return to his childhood." ( Der Spiegel )
  • “With 'Caché' Michael Haneke… brought a highly concentrated, cold story to Cannes, above which lies a not so indefinite sense of threat emanating from video tapes that are actually quite harmless and sent to an educated middle-class family. By whom, it is not entirely clear until the end, but what happens to the family in the meantime and how Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche play it, how they start to stare at each other, to distrust each other, that sets the film apart from the weekend program ... European auteur cinema in its purest, best form. " ( FAZ )
  • The inspiration for the story was the massacre of October 17, 1961 in Paris, in which over 200 people who demonstrated against the Algerian war were killed by the police. The tragic event was never cleared up and is still a taboo subject in France today. ( LISTEN )

Remarks

  • Caché was selected as the official Austrian entry for a possible Oscar nomination in the Best Foreign Language Film category , but was rejected by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences - on the grounds that the film was shot in French and not German , though the Austrian Michael Haneke acted as a director and screenwriter, co-produced an Austrian company, the interior shots took place in Austria and Austrian mimes also belong to the theater ensemble. This disqualified the film as a possible French competition entry at the Oscars .
  • In the US, the film's distribution title is Hidden .
  • Before the film was released in German-speaking countries, occasional reports mentioned Hidden as a possible German distribution title. The French word caché , however, means "hidden" as well as "hidden"; due to this ambiguity, the original title was retained.

Awards

Michael Haneke's thriller was awarded the FIPRESCI Prize of International Film Critics and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at the Cannes International Film Festival on May 20, 2005 . A day later, the Austrian filmmaker was awarded the director's award. Although it was the clear favorite for the best film among critics, Caché was defeated in the competition for the drama The Child of the Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne . At the end of October 2005, Caché was awarded the special prize for the 50th anniversary of the festival at the Valladolid film festival together with Lars von Trier's drama Manderlay . At the presentation of the European Film Prize on December 3, 2005, Caché u. a. against Susanne Bier's family drama Brothers - prevail between brothers and was awarded in five categories: best film, best director, Daniel Auteuil as best actor, best editing - and there was also another award from FIPRESCI. At the French César film award ceremony , the film was nominated in four categories, including Michael Haneke as best director .

César 2006

  • nominated in the categories

Further

Cannes International Film Festival 2005

Chlotrudis Awards 2007

  • Best movie
  • Best director
    • further nominated
  • Best Actor
  • Best script

European Film Award 2005

  • Best movie
  • Best director
  • Best Actor (Daniel Auteuil)
  • Best cut
  • European FIPRESCI Prize
    • nominated in the categories
      • Best Actress (Juliette Binoche)
      • Best script
      • Best camera

Hollywood Film Festival 2005

  • nominated for the Hollywood World Award for best film

Prix ​​Lumières for the best screenplay .

Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards 2005

  • Best foreign language film

Valladolid Film Festival 2005

  • Special Price

Online Film Critics Society Awards 2005

  • nominated in the category of best foreign language film

literature

  • Eberhard Ostermann: Social and aesthetic uncertainty in "Caché" . In: EO: The Movie Count. Eight exemplary analyzes. Munich (Fink) 2007. pp. 113-129. ISBN 978-3-7705-4562-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for Caché . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , December 2005 (PDF; test number: 104 648 K).
  2. ↑ a b c cf. Interview with Haneke, bonus material on the German DVD release of Euro Video 2006
  3. ↑ Making-of , bonus material on the German DVD release of Euro Video 2006