The film opens with an extended, stationary shot of the outside of an apartment building. At about the time I gave up wondering what I should be focusing on and started meditating on the scene, my expectations were upended for the first of many times. Blurred fast-motion video lines cross the image, which turns out to be part of an ominous tape left anonymously for the apartment’s residents. The family tries to write off the odd video as just the prank of a weird fan of the husband, the host of a highbrow TV talk show. But when more tapes arrive with cryptic and frightening drawings, the family’s paranoia grows and their cool demeanor cracks.

Cache draws comparisons to David Lynch’s Lost Highway for its theme of home invasion by surveillance, and for never worrying too much about answering all of the audience’s questions. Even the most seemingly central mystery — who exactly is sending those blasted tapes? — is never concretely explained. It’s bothersome at first, but strongly suggestive that there are subtler issues worthy of our real attention.

What we do find out is almost as disturbing as the unknown stalker. The husband has unresolved dark business from his childhood. His classism and racism do him more damage than whatever he tries to distance himself from. The sins (and pains) of a father are inevitably passed on to his son. There are no supernatural forces at play, and there don’t need to be to create a very disturbing and scary atmosphere. The tension begins as a small curiosity and is generously fed by characters who quickly lose grips on the pleasant surface of their privileged life and marital trust.

Writer/director Michael Haneke has a reputation for brutal filmmaking, most notably for his audience-as-accessory-to-crime exercise Funny Games. I was wary of his apparent restraint through most of the movie (another source of tension), and joined in the audience’s loud gasp when a pivotal shocking scene finally played out. That scene was one of the main images to stick in my mind after leaving the theater, but all the little unseen pieces continued to nag at me long after the more extreme images faded.

There are no comments yet. You could be the first!