Hidden (Caché) compresses all Herr Haneke’s pet preoccupations – voyeurism, colonialism, bourgeois complacency, weasels under cocktail cabinets – into his most effectively disquieting thriller since Funny Games. Even Isabelle Huppert doing nasty things to her girl bits in The Piano Teacher has nothing on the unease cultivated by this latest work from the Austrian auteur. Opening with a long, static surveillance shot (the first of many) of a Parisian apartment, a sudden crackle and a female voice alerts us to the fact we are watching a video. More precisely, we’re watching resolutely middle class couple Georges (Auteuil) and Anne (Binoche) watching a video, a view of their place from the street – hours worth of footage – sent through the post by an anonymous, almost certainly malicious source.
The cassettes keep arriving, as do creepy children’s drawings of beheaded chickens. The couple fear for their safety and that of their son Pierrot.
Menacing, brilliant and jolting, Hidden is rife with accusation, like a tap on the shoulder you’ve been dreading for years. The middle classes don’t get off too lightly, nor do the French, nor anyone else. Haneke toys with protagonist and audience alike.
Like Georges, the viewer becomes like a rat in a maze. That may not sound like much fun, but you have to imagine it with an exhilarating, nauseating hamster wheel in the corner. I’m so there.