Caché (2005)

A local celebrity and his wife receive a series of videotapes. At first the recordings contain nothing but hours of footage of the front of their home. They're naturally confused, but they're not actually being threatened. The tapes get progressively more worrisome (i.e. footage of the husband's childhood home, spare drawings of bloody heads), yet police are helpless as no law has been broken.

The acting is superb and the couple seem incredibly real. The lack of a musical score made it feel less like something staged and more like we were glimpsing actual reactions. Despite these precise choices in the look and feel of the film, the story left me frustrated. I was solving a mystery -- changing my mind about what I thought as bits were exposed. I mean, the whole movie appeared to be designed as a "whodunit and why." Without eventually providing solid answers to those questions, there's no longterm satisfaction.

Still, it's effective for every bit of the time spent watching. It's only in the aftermath that irritation sets in.

B