The Frame

Can I first say that this was worth seeing in theatres just to hear people’s reactions at the end? “What the hell?” “I was gypped!” Hee. And really, it’s not difficult to understand such reactions. Caché is very odd little film. The story, such as it is, is that Daniel Autiuel and Juliette Binoche start receiving mysterious videotapes of the exterior of their apartment, taken from across the street. The shot of their apartment from across the street is returned to time and time again, and often for minutes at a time. The pace is often excruciatingly slow, obviously on purpose, as the shot usually turns out to be the video itself as the couple play it over in their apartment, agonizing over who has sent it to them and why. Many other things come into play, as well. From stuff I’ve read since seeing it, it is apparently helpful to have some knowledge of French/Algerian relations (Algeria used to be a French colony, there were some riots in the 1950s or something, I don’t really know much about it myself), but the fact that I still overall enjoyed the film, despite getting rather stiff while sitting through it, merely points out that Caché works on a number of different levels.
Above Average