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Hidden (cache) [DVD]
 
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Hidden (cache) [DVD]

 Suitable for 15 years and over   DVD
3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (97 customer reviews)
Price: £4.99 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
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Frequently Bought Together

Hidden (cache) [DVD] + Tell No-One (Ne Le Dis A Personne) [DVD] + L'Appartement [DVD]
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Product details

  • Format: PAL
  • Language French
  • Subtitles: English
  • Region: Region 2 (This DVD may not be viewable outside Europe. Read more about DVD formats.)
  • Number of discs: 1
  • Classification: 15
  • Studio: Artificial Eye
  • DVD Release Date: 19 Jun 2006
  • Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (97 customer reviews)
  • ASIN: B000EJ9NIW
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 4,433 in Film & TV (See Top 100 in Film & TV)

Reviews

Amazon.co.uk Review

A tense, taut and unsettling thriller, Hidden is a film that expertly follows television presenter Georges, whose seemingly perfect life is shattered when he receives a videotape. On it is a lengthy stream of surveillance footage of his home, shot from just across the street. And it’s just the first of many. Further tapes, accompanied by strange and disturbing drawings, start to arrive, leaving Georges, his wife and his teenage son unsettled.

The film slowly builds from there, as Georges starts looking to his past to try and find the answer to who is sending the tapes, only to find himself increasingly disturbed by the memories he recalls.

Grounded by excellent performances from Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche, Hidden is a masterclass in slow-burning cinema. It has no easy answers, boasts some quite superb direction, and it’s also distinctly unconventional in how it goes about its business (right from the opening titles). Director Michael Haneke (The Piano Teacher) cleverly works his story across several levels, and while, come the end credits, some may initially find themselves underwhelmed, here’s a film that stays in the brain long after the stop button has been pressed. Granted, it won’t be to all tastes, but those that do find themselves engrossed are likely to agree that this is one of the finest French films in many years.--Jon Foster

DVD Description

Writer/director Michael Haneke delivers a masterpiece of unsettlement. Life seems perfect for Georges (Daniel Auteuil) and Anne (Juliette Binoche), a bourgeois Parisian couple who live in a comfortable home with their adolescent son, Pierrot (Lester Makedonsky). But when an anonymous videotape turns up on their doorstep, showing their house under surveillance from across the street, their calm life begins to spiral out of control. Subsequent videotapes arrive, accompanied by mysterious drawings, and gradually Georges becomes convinced that he's being tormented by a figure from his past. But when he confronts him, the man assures Georges he is innocent. A growing sense of guilt begins to rise in Georges as he recalls his less-than-angelic childhood, yet for some reason he's unable to be completely honest with Anne. Soon, their happy home is an emotional battleground, leading to a climax that is breathtaking in its ferocity and ambiguousness.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Productive frustration 22 July 2006
By Trevor Willsmer HALL OF FAME TOP 10 REVIEWER
Format:DVD
I wasn't prepared for how powerful Caché turned out to be: it's been a long time since I've heard an entire cinema gasp in genuine shock at one sequence and it's almost as shocking second time round on the small screen when you know what's coming. On the surface it's a fairly typical French film, but it's what's under the surface that really counts. That said, it's still a film that many dismiss as empty or dilettante filmmaking, either because it's more concerned with the fallout its mystery provokes than offering a solution or because it's just trendy liberalism. It's certainly not for all tastes.

The central premise is simple enough, as Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche's comfortable bourgeois life is put under increasing strain by a series of videotapes of the their house accompanied by childish drawings of bleeding faces. The tapes show nothing: their menace comes not from their contents but the fact that they exist. Since the drawings have to come from someone who knows the character's past, is it Auteuil's Georges' own conscience that is sending them? Or is it the filmmaker himself to provoke a reaction from his characters? Significantly the tapes are all shot on a fixed camera mounted on a raised tripod in what must be a clearly visible position. The appearance of the second tape blocking a doorway that was clear earlier in the shot offers little else in the way of a possible natural explanation.

But the tapes are really just a Maguffin, a narrative device to push the characters and plot forward. This particular lost highway leads into the past, and France's inability to apologise for it's colonial past (specifically Algeria), something it absolves itself of all guilt from by repeating the mantra that it was all in the past when they were much younger and knew no better, as if that wipes out thousands of futures denied or stolen. It's no accident that the film revolves around a failed adoption that mirrors France's own failed colonisations.

While the characters are believable rather than Godardian or art-house archetypes, it's easy to ascribe a wider allegorical purpose to them. Georges is a reflection of France itself, outwardly respectable but denying his past and not acknowledging guilt over Algeria (significantly, Auteuil was born there). He simply doesn't want to talk about it. He doesn't even connect emotionally with his present, let alone his past, mother, son and wife all a part of his life he really has nothing much to say about. Nothing is ever Georges' fault, not even a near accident crossing the street. He blames a cyclist for his careless mistake, showing that he has learned nothing from his past but is still repeating it. As with the opening of Haneke's epic of non-communication, Code Unknown, he is oblivious to the wider implications of what is to him a trivial moment or of the possible consequences of his moment of self-righteous anger.

Just as he edits out anything 'too theoretical' in his TV show, he tries to re-edit his own past (just as the French government did last year when it passed a law that "the benefits of French colonisation in foreign countries should be recognised and integrated into school programs.") but can't do it quite so easily. Not that he doesn't try. Both of Georges' initial flashbacks are dishonest reinventions of memory: Georges turns his childish conspiracy against one character into his victim terrorising him, reinventing his memory and history to reflect his current interpretation of events and reality. It's this reinvention that allows him to honestly claim without any real evidence that he is being terrorised - "a campaign of terror" are his exact words - by the person he has wronged, actions currently being replayed in Iraq. To France, the atrocities inflicted on the Algerians don't matter - it's the threat to Georges that, in his childlike ignorance, is all that matters and must be dealt with radically.

Indeed, even though Majid and his son are French-born, both are regarded as foreigners, intruders. Yet neither conforms to the stereotyped 'Arab' image: polite, sad, very pointedly not aggressive, yet still regarded purely as a threat for being goaded into an action for which they were punished.

Binoche can be seen as the French people, kept in the dark, asked for their trust although trust is not extended to them in much the same way that Blair in the UK asked for people's trust over the intelligence that led to the UK's involvement in Iraq yet never revealed nor explained his reasons beyond his contention that he was convinced it was "the right thing to do, but it's time to move forward." But if Binoche is the French people, she is no more admirable herself. Both ignore the violence and torture that plays unwatched on a TV in the background in one scene and concentrate on their own immediate priorities.

I still haven't had time to fully digest all the implications of the ending - is he committing suicide himself? (Probably not since he feels no guilt.) Is the hidden shot of two children talking to each other in the final shot a sign of complicity or the way that each generation is doomed to suffer for the sins of the father? Is it the next tape to be sent? It's almost a Rorschach Test for the viewer: how you interpret it says more about you than the film.

Haneke makes no secret that he isn't interested in providing answers but rather is forcing questions on the viewer to make them more of a participant: "I'm not going to give anyone the answer. If you think it's Majid, Pierrot, Georges, the malevolent director, God himself, the human conscience - all these answers are correct. But if you come out wanting to know who sent the tapes, you didn't understand the film. To ask this question is to avoid asking the real question the film raises, which is more: how do we treat our conscience and our guilt and reconcile ourselves to living with our actions... I look at it as productive frustration. Films that are entertainments give simple answers but I think that's ultimately more cynical, as it denies the viewer room to think."
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14 of 17 people found the following review helpful
By steve b
Format:DVD
Hidden clearly splits viewers into two camps, those who love it and compare it to what Hollywood would do with the same subject, and those who believe it is arty, pretentious, French rubbish.

Although I believe it is not as good as some of it's supporters claim, I do come down on the side of those like, rather than loath it. It is slow when compaired to most European films let alone American ones. This film is often called a thriller. If you watch it because you are expecting a thriller, then you will feel cheated. It is a film about guilt and the stress that the events cause to the family.

Even those who do not like this film cannot but praise the performances of Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche. It is acting of the highest order and totaly believable. A film worth watching just to see these two performances.
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71 of 89 people found the following review helpful
By S. J. Williams TOP 500 REVIEWER VINE™ VOICE
Format:DVD
Unlike the last reviewer, I think Hidden is stunning. The lack of music doesn't bother me: the film is made with such subtlety and surefootedness that Haneke doesn't need the emotional prompting that so many films require from a soundtrack. Music can be great where it's needed and this film doesn't need it and would be spoiled by it. As for the patronising attitude to French films, what can one say. Don't like them, don't watch them. I admire the way this film-maker is prepared to entertain (yes!) and make his audience think.

The absence of closure is, of course, an essential element in the success of the film. Inevitably we speculate on the level of story - just who did send the tapes? However, as everyone recognises, the film is about more than the Laurents' and particularly George's guilt. Making a character responsible for the tapes would apportion 'guilt' and that is a key theme of the film: George's guilt; France's in relation to Algeria; the coalition's in relation to Iraq (it isn't for nothing that one scene has a news report from the Middle East in prominent background); the viewer's reponsibilities for events in their lives.

I read the film as exploring the nature of guilt, taking responsibility for what we do and the way(s) we go about that. At the end of the film, George has gone to bed, taken pills, shut out the world as much as he can. What he did as a child may be understandable, though unkind and cruel: he wanted his parents to himself, though it is clear and ironic that as an adult he doesn't want his mother or her farm at all.

That it isn't a conventional thriller is obvious from the opening frame though it exploits elements of the genre: there is no 'set up' or equilibrium to be disrupted beyond the duration of shot one until the tape is rewound: the first shot throws us into the mystery of the surveillance, as though it had always existed (perhaps like the stirrings of George's conscience/guilt for his childhood behaviour).

The handling of point of view is brilliant and unsettling too: much of the time we are unsure whose eyes we are seeing through. It also seems to me that the whole movie could, in a sense, not really be happening but represents George's fear of his guilty conscience.

I wouldn't claim to be able to give a masterclass on this film and understand every nuance, but that's OK: I only saw it last night for the first time, and it has been pre-occupying me since. I shall certainly be going back to enjoy its thought provoking narrative and superb craftsmanship. A great film.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Haunting and uneasy
This is the first film I've seen by Haneke and I'm keen now to see more. Hidden (which I watched with English subtitles) is perfectly constructed - clever, dark and profoundly... Read more
Published 1 month ago by wordfan
I wish more films were this good
Yet another Haneke film that is spellbinding, thought-provoking and hugely entertaining. If you 'get it' then there is absolutely nothing I need to add to the worthy praise already... Read more
Published 3 months ago by thetruthshallsetyefree
Hidden I wish it was
The nightmare of all is that which is most hidden. Since the fear comes from what we cannot see we allow oursleves to give meaning to the meaningless and form to the formless. Read more
Published 3 months ago by M. Locke
Understated Masterpiece
I must admit I was very surprised to see how Michael Haneke's 2005 tale of guilt and revenge has polarised opinion. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Keith M
weak and disappointing
This is a poor film. The storyline seems to have potential at the start but totally fails to deliver. Read more
Published 7 months ago by K. P. Borley
Slow and uninteresting
I like Daniel Autiel, but I did not like Hidden. The premise is that a video from surveillance of Autiel's house is recieved in the mail. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Robert
Haven't Seen Many Films that Have Affected Me as much as This One
This is a great film. The interview with the director (AFTER you've watched it!) is an essential part of the package. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Badger O Stripey One
Utter utter utter utter utter utter
Tripe. Hard to know where to begin. Why has such an obviously dreadfully poor film been eulogised in certain quarters? Because:
1) It has a politically correct slant. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Bookworm
unmitigated tripe
Boring from start to finish. No plot, poor script, pretentious twaddle by the chattering classes for the chattering classes. No wonder Mark Lawson liked it. Read more
Published 15 months ago by willesden wanderer
The ultimate cinematic let down?
Although the opening scene of a couple's property being filmed from afar is far too long, the film had me hooked as I was curious to find out why Daniel Auteuil's character was... Read more
Published 16 months ago by Ian Thumwood
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