Caché (film)

Caché (French: [kaʃe]), also known as Hidden, is a 2005 neo-noir psychological thriller film written and directed by Michael Haneke and starring Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche. The plot follows an upper-middle-class French couple, Georges (Auteuil) and Anne (Binoche), who are terrorised by anonymous tapes that appear on their front porch and seem to show the family is under surveillance. Clues in the videos point to Georges's childhood memories, and his resistance to his parents' adopting an Algerian orphan named Majid, who was sent away.

Shot in Paris and Vienna in 2004, the film is an international co-production of France, Austria, Germany and Italy. Haneke wrote the screenplay with Auteuil and Binoche in mind, and with a concept of exploring guilt and childhood. When he learned of the French government's decades-long denial of the 1961 Seine River massacre, he incorporated memories of the event into his story.

Caché opened at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival to critical acclaim for the performances and Haneke's direction. Its plot ambiguities raised considerable discussion. The film has been interpreted as an allegory about collective guilt and collective memory, and as a statement on France's Algerian War and colonialism in general. While presented as a mystery, the film does not explicitly reveal which character sends the tapes. Haneke regarded that as of secondary importance to the exploration of guilt and left the question up to viewer interpretation.

The film won three awards at Cannes, including Best Director; five European Film Awards, including Best Film; and other honours. It was controversially disqualified for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Caché has been regarded in the years since its release as one of the great films of the 2000s, included in BBC's 100 Greatest Films of the 21st Century.

An affluent Parisian couple, Anne and Georges Laurent, discover a videotape left on their property without explanation that shows hours of footage of their residence, implying they are under surveillance. Puzzled about its origin, they debate its purpose, considering whether it might be a practical joke played by friends of their 12-year-old son, Pierrot, or the work of fans of Georges, who hosts a literary television show. A second tape arrives, accompanied by a childlike drawing of a person with blood streaming out of his mouth. Similar drawings are mailed to Georges's workplace and Pierrot's school. Disturbed, the Laurents turn to the police, who determine the tapes are too harmless to be considered criminal activity. The Laurents host a dinner party that is interrupted by the delivery of another videotape, with a crude drawing of a chicken bleeding at its neck. When Anne discloses the stalking to their friends, Georges puts the tape in the VCR and finds it shows the estate where he grew up.

Georges begins to have vivid dreams about Majid, a boy he knew in childhood. Majid's Algerian parents worked as farmhands on Georges's family estate but disappeared in the Paris massacre of 1961. Feeling responsible for Majid, Georges's parents intended to adopt him, but the process was never finalised. Suspecting Majid might be responsible for the tapes, Georges visits his ailing mother, who surprisingly professes not to remember Majid well. When the Laurents receive another tape, revealing a low-income housing apartment, Georges tells Anne he has a suspect in mind, but will not say who until he can confirm his suspicion. Anne responds with shock at what she sees as his lack of trust.

Following the last tape's clues, Georges locates the apartment off Avenue Lénine in Romainville and finds Majid there. Majid denies knowledge of the tapes or drawing, but Georges does not believe him and threatens him. A hidden camera recorded the conversation with Majid, who breaks down crying after Georges leaves, and tapes of the encounter are sent to Anne and Georges's employer. Georges explains to Anne that he was six when his parents were planning to adopt Majid and that he did not want it to happen; he told lies about Majid, who was sent away. When Pierrot disappears, the Laurents frantically contact the police, who check Majid's apartment and arrest Majid and Majid's son, though they deny involvement in kidnapping. Pierrot returns to his family, having spent time with friends, and hints to Anne that he thinks she is too close to Pierre, a family friend.

Majid calls Georges and asks him to come back to the apartment. When Georges arrives, Majid denies having sent the tapes, says he wanted Georges present, and kills himself by slashing his throat. Georges confesses to Anne that as a boy, he had claimed Majid was coughing up blood and convinced Majid to kill the family's rooster, falsely claiming his father wanted him to. The police confirm the cause of death as suicide, but Majid's son appears at Georges's workplace to confront him. Believing the son is responsible for the tapes, Georges threatens him to cease surveillance, but the son replies he was not involved with the tapes and wanted to know how Georges felt about being responsible for a death. Later, Majid's son converses with Pierrot after school.

A basis for the story was the massacre that took place in Paris on 17 October 1961, referenced by the character Georges:

During the Algerian War, the National Liberation Front responded to the French right's attacks on France's Arabs, and as many as 200 protesters in Paris may have been shot or drowned in the Seine River. Maurice Papon was prefect of the Paris police, and previously served Vichy France; a book about Vichy is visible on Georges's shelf. In the aftermath of the massacre, the French government suppressed many of the facts by restricting police archives and delaying and cancelling public investigations, until allowing three historians to review the archives in 1998. The media reported three deaths in 1961; the massacre was not revisited until 1997 when Papon went to trial for his Vichy record.

While planning the production of Caché, Haneke learned about the massacre, and how information about it was withheld for years, after seeing a television documentary on Arte. He remarked, given France's free press, "I was totally shocked that I had never heard of this event before". He decided to work it into his story.

Haneke began writing the screenplay by September 2001. He described a starting point: "I had been toying with the idea of writing a script in which someone is confronted with his guilt for something he did in childhood". In planning the film, he chose the thriller genre as a model but intended the true point to be an exploration of guilt; he deliberately left the question of who sent the tapes ambiguous:

Haneke also left it ambiguous whether the young Georges's claim that Majid coughed blood was a lie, but said he viewed the depiction of Majid menacing Georges with an ax as a mere nightmare.

While the Paris massacre inspired the plot, Haneke said the story was not about a "French problem" as something unusual, remarking, "This film was made in France, but I could have shot it with very few adjustments within an Austrian – or I'm sure an American – context". Another inspiration was a story he had heard from a friend, similar to that which Denis Podalydès's character tells when claiming to have a scar matching the wound of a dog killed on the day the character was born. Haneke explained, "I wrote it down when I got home and always wanted to use it. I think it sits well here because it makes people ask if it's true or not".

While the filmmakers intended the production to be entirely French, they discovered they could not raise the funds in the one country. It received international backing from Les Films du Losange, Wega-Film, Bavaria Film and BIM Distribuzione which are respectively based in France, Austria, Germany and Italy. Haneke also secured funds from ORF in his native Austria, for a budget of €8 million.

Haneke stated that "Daniel Auteuil was the reason I wrote this script" and that he envisioned Auteuil and Binoche in the lead roles and had "almost all the actors in mind" while working on the screenplay. Haneke had never worked with Auteuil before, but chose him because he felt Auteuil always played his roles as if keeping a secret. Auteuil had learned of the 1961 massacre only after reading about it in L'Obs circa 1995; he accepted the role, interested in exploring the national conscience surrounding the incident, which made an impression on him. Juliette Binoche had previously starred in Haneke's 2000 Code Unknown, where her character was also named Anne Laurent. She joined the cast, along with Auteuil, in fall 2002.

Child actor Lester Makedonsky was cast as Pierrot, and because of his swimming skills, the filmmakers chose swimming as Pierrot's sport. Haneke had also worked with Maurice Bénichou before on Code Unknown and Time of the Wolf (2003), Walid Afkir [fr] on Code Unknown. and Annie Girardot in The Piano Teacher. Nathalie Richard previously played a character named Mathilde in Code Unknown, both being friends of the two versions of Anne Laurent.

Principal photography took place at Rue des Iris and Rue Brillat-Savarin, Paris, where Haneke ordered parked vehicles arranged and rearranged to match his vision and prepare for tracking shots. Majid's neighbourhood was filmed on location at Avenue Lénine in Romainville. Interior scenes at the Laurent residence were shot in Vienna, Austria in August 2004. Interior scenes for Majid's apartment were also shot in Vienna, with Paris largely used for outdoor scenes, and stairs from Paris replicated in Vienna. Haneke said most of the filming likely took place in Vienna. It was the first film he made using high-definition video cameras; it also has no score, due to Haneke's belief that music conflicts with realism.

For the scene in which a rooster is beheaded, a real chicken was used and actually killed. In the suicide scene, Haneke sought to create a realistic effect, remarking "if the suicide scene is not plausible then the entire film is spoiled". In the final scene, Lester Makedonsky and Walid Afkir are speaking dialogue Haneke scripted, but Haneke chose not to publish it and left it inaudible, and instructed the actors to never disclose it. Haneke chose a wide shot and positioned the extras so that viewers might not notice Makedonsky and Afkir. He described post-production as marked by arduous work on fixing the sound.