ABSTRACT

The opening sequence of the film Caché (Hidden) by Michael Haneke, released in 2005, offers a long shot of a Parisian street leading to the front door of a discreet upper middle-class house. People walk, cycle, or drive by, unaware that they are being filmed. The opening shot does not offer any information about what the viewer should be paying attention to. After three long minutes, we hear the voice of two characters—a man and a woman—commenting on the same image, the same image the viewer is seeing, and the nature of the opening shot is revealed. We are watching a video, which is also being watched by the film’s main characters: Georges Laurent, the presenter of a literary talk show, and his wife, Anne, a publisher. The elegant house, recorded in the video, is the Laurents’s family home. The viewer soon finds out that the videotape, which contains that first shot, is one of many sinister parcels (including other videos as well as childish drawings) that Georges’s family is being sent anonymously and that have disturbed the already tense, guarded, and secretive family life of the Laurents.