Caché (Hidden): BFI Film Classic

Research output: Book/ReportBook

Abstract

Ever since its world premiere at the Cannes film festival in May 2005, audiences have been talking about Michael Haneke's Cache. The film's enigmatic and multi-layered narrative leaves its viewers with many more questions than answers. The plot revolves around the mystery of who is sending a series of sinister videos and drawings to Georges Laurent (Daniel Auteuil), the presenter of a literary talkshow. As Georges becomes increasingly secretive, much to the distress of his wife Anne (Juliette Binoche), a culprit fails to surface. And even at the film's end, audiences are left struggling to make sense of what has gone before. This hasn't stopped people trying. As Catherine Wheatley examines, a wealth of critical writing surrounds Cache, with various explanations having been offered as to what the film is 'really' about. In an in-depth and illuminating account, Wheatley examines the key themes at the heart of the 'meaning' of Cache: the film as thriller; post-colonial bourgeois guilt; political accountability and lastly, reality, the media and its audiences, tracing these strands through the film by means of close readings of individual scenes and moments.
Inspired by the director's claim that we might understand the film as a set of Russian dolls, each of which is complete in itself but together forms a whole in which layers of unseen depth are concealed, Wheatley avoids a single, unifying approach to understanding Cache. Instead, her detailed analysis of the film's shifting perspectives opens up the multiplicity of meanings that Cache contains, in order to understand its secrets. Ever since its world premiere at the Cannes film festival in May 2005, audiences have been talking about Michael Haneke's Cache. The film's enigmatic and multi-layered narrative leaves its viewers with many more questions than answers.
Original languageEnglish
Place of PublicationLondon
PublisherBFI Publishing
Number of pages96
ISBN (Electronic)9781844573493
ISBN (Print)9781844573493
Publication statusPublished - 27 Jan 2012

Publication series

NameFilm Classics
PublisherBFI

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