Caché (2005)

English title: Hidden.

Synopsis: Someone is leaving VHS tapes at the Laurents' doorstep. And with them, ugly drawings of people bleeding and such. Who is torturing this happy family? Is it some crazed fan of M. Laurent, the host of a literary TV show? Or is it someone from his guilty past? (Don't worry, the film never shows who's done it.)

Appraisal: First, an advice for young filmmakers: if you must make a thriller, you must never (and I mean never!) solve it. Preferrably, make up a story which couldn't possibly be solved. Anyway, the important thing is, end it abruptly, leaving a feeling of emptiness in the audience. Otherwise you will never be taken seriously as an Artist (notice the capital letter). Caché might have had an epilogue in which it is revealed that the culprit is a deranged janitor, or a jealous co-worker of M. Laurent's, or Mme. Laurent's best friend Pierre, who lends her a shoulder when she is sad and, it would turn out, is secretly in love with her, having lost all vestige of sanity on account of it, or (why not) Pierrot's swimming instructor, and the list could go on. In that case, Caché would be positively identified as an American TV movie, the sorts of which, until a few years ago, were shown on a regular basis on Open TV on Saturday nights, after the soap opera in Brazil. But, if you don't want that to happen, and you want your film to be a French arthouse film instead, you don't have to change but two things: (1) as I said, cut the ending; yeah, simply throw it away, or rather, don't shoot it at all; (2) don't hire American TV second rate actors, but French first rate ones. Voilà, there's your Art film. Apparently most "refined" viewers never posed themselves a very simple question: how will a story that is blatantly implausible - which is obviously the reason it is left unsolved - cause any fear on the audience? We fear what can happen, not what cannot.

Rating: 25