Hidden

Georges (Auteuil) hosts a TV literary chat-show, and discovers the drawbacks to celebrity when he and his wife Anne (Binoche) start receiving videotapes of their comings and goings filmed outside the house and wrapped in childlike drawings evocative of bloody violence. Even when the tapes’ contents suggest the anonymous sender has some intimate knowledge of – and murderous intent towards – Georges’ life, the police insist they can do nothing, and the tension begins to take its toll on his family, not to mention his sense of justice… Haneke uses this relatively straightforward story to explore a complex range of issues to do with contemporary life: celebrity and social inequality, the erosion of privacy, the fear of the Other, the weight of the past, the relationship between responsibility, repression and conscience, voyeurism and technology. It’s a spectacularly intelligent movie, but it also succeeds superbly as suspenseful, gripping and emotionally affecting drama, thanks in no small part to the uniformly excellent performances. A film of many splendid ambiguities; the final shot is just the icing on the cake.