Cache (aka Hidden)

French/118 Minutes/2005/Rated R

“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” - Sigmund Freud

The literal English translation of the title “Cache” is “Hidden,” a better title and a more apt description. For just as the characters have hidden things from each other, so has Haneke hidden the real drama from the viewer.

The story is supposedly about a well-to-do French couple, Georges and Anne (Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche) who are terrorized by someone sending them tapes of the outside of their house. The tapes are accompanied by child-like drawings of violence. These pictures draw to mind an unresolved guilt of Georges' and when the tapes lead him to a childhood friend things start to unravel.

In “Cache” Haneke has intentionally made a film that is difficult and ambiguous. He shoots in excruciatingly long takes (as long as 3 minutes of a static shot) that force us to focus on what is occurring within the frame. Characters come and go within the frame and many times in wide shot where their encounters have no sound leaving us to make what we will of them. The viewer is made to feel as much the voyeur as the spy sending the tapes. Perhaps that is Haneke's intent.

Indeed many times we are unsure if we are watching the film itself, one of the tapes sent to Georges and Anne, or the filming of one of the tapes. In fact the first scene is a static shot of their house from the outside that lasts for three minutes before the characters start talking off screen and begin fast forwarding through the video. The film is very ambiguous and plays with the fourth wall in a similar way to Haneke's movie Funny Games.

“Cache” is not a movie to be watched but rather to be absorbed and thought about. When the film first ended and I sat down to write this review I was very unimpressed, however, the longer I thought about it (and admittedly trawled the message boards) the more the film seemed to bloom, peeling away layers that revealed the film that I did not think was there.

On the down side we are drawn almost too far outside the drama, the characters too isolated. In many ways Haneke's film is less a dramatic film than an observance. And the presence of some dramatic forward motion, some conflict that grows and is then resolved, is what differentiates a film from an assembled home movie. Unfortunately “Cache” falls closer to home movie than good movie and that is ultimately its undoing.

While “Cache” may grow upon reflection there is still much that could be done to make it less abstract and more engaging. The film forgets that film is a “show me” medium and would rather keep things so open to interpretation that the film ultimately says nothing significant. There is an interesting movie in here somewhere, but it feels too unfocused to make its mark. Not recommended (unless you're a film student).

Rated R for Brief Strong Violence (also contains brief nudity and language)

The Counterfeiters (aka Die Falscher)

German/99 Minutes/Rated R/2007

The Counterfeiters joins a respected list of both Holocaust survivor stories and prison camp anti-heroes. This film took home the 2007 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film as well as several international awards. That aside we've been told this story before, and much better.

The film, based on the book “The Devil's Workshop” puts us inside the largest counterfeiting scam ever documented. During WWII the Nazis wanted to ruin the economies of Britain and the US by flushing them with forged bills. To this end a group of artisans, printers and forgers were brought together in a concentration camp and forced to produce these bills. In return they were given privileges such as soft beds, better food, and (in one strange case) entertainment.

Our lead character is one Salomon “Sally” Sorowitsch the greatest counterfeiter perhaps ever. He lives high and well and is only caught when he falls into lazy dalliance with a client's wife. After he is captured he is sent to a concentration camp where he ingratiates himself with his captors by drawing portraits of them and their families. Eventually he is moved to Sachsenhausen where he is brought in to perfect the counterfeiting of Pounds and Dollars.

Sally is an adapter and prizes himself for his ability to survive. More than once we are treated to sequences that show that Sally is smart and perhaps low on scruples. He doesn't care that his work may lengthen the war and aid the Nazis, he just wants to eat well.

Sally finds his moral counterpoint, nemesis, conscience in Burger an expert printer who is determined to undermine Sally at every turn in the name of some higher cause. He's perfectly happy to sacrifice himself and the others in the project to deny the Nazis their collusion and aid. The battle of wits between Sally and Burger and Sally's machinations attempting to play the Nazis are the central stories here.

Unfortunately, while the film is well made and acted (with a great performance by Karl Markovics as Sally), it feels hollow. We never get the sense of guilt the counterfeiters are supposed to feel at their better position in the camps. In fact, very little of the outside is shown, perhaps a stab at realism, but the drama is the lesser for it. The film is brisk but never builds any real tension. Burger comes across as selfish and self-righteous. The end of Sally's arc feels forced the writer bestowing on him emotions that he has not shown throughout.

The film holds itself out as a story of survival which asks the question “is just surviving enough?” This has been addressed in many better films. One example that kept coming to mind was Lina Wertmuller's “Seven Beauties (1975)” where Giancarlo Giannini plays a pimp who must struggle to survive in a concentration camp and how his decisions reshape him. Also there's the great POW drama "Stalag 17" directed by Billy Wilder, starring William Holden as a Sally type of character. Both are much better than this one.

Ultimately “The Counterfeiters” fails to engage and never really gives us the tension, revelation or pay off it seems to think it gives. Back to film school for these guys. Not Recommended.

Rated R for Some Strong Violence, Brief Sexuality/Nudity and Language