Nothing remains hidden forever

We spent Friday night watching “Caché,” the Michael Haneke film that just came out on DVD. As with the rest of the films of his that I’ve seen – “Benny’s Video,” “Funny Games,” “The Piano Player” and “The Time of the Wolf” – “Caché” isn’t an ordinary movie experience.

Haneke, a 64-year-old German-born filmmaker who was lives in Austria, makes movies that are strange, bizarre, discomfiting and even, sometimes, nightmare-inducing. And “Caché” is no different.

Set in contemporary Paris, it involves a married couple ( Daniel Auteuil , Juliette Binoche ) and their son who start receiving strange videotapes on their doorstop. The tapes are accompanied by thoroughly strange drawings done as if by a child portraying violent acts.

Worse, they are extended recordings of the outside of their house that portray their everyday comings and goings. Someone, it is clear, is observing their daily lives.

At first confused, then genuinely concerned, the family begins to show the cracks in their relationship that have been there all along. Ultimately, Haneke is asking us what happens when instead of owning up to past secrets you merely tell more, and more, as a way of maintaining a false truth?

In the case of this family, I’m not sure a revelation of long-maintained secrets makes any difference at all – to them, that is, though it certainly affects someone Auteuil’s character knew for a short while during his childhood. But then what the movie makes clear is that such subterfuges tend to affect us in ways that we don’t always see.

At least not at first.