Just because it's French, doesn't mean it's good.
I've seen many praises for this movie and was anticipating an enjoyable and thrilling ride. Unfortunately I was left scratching my head at the end of the movie wondering why the director decided not to complete it.
Without giving too much away, this film does engage the viewer psychologically with almost exclusively claustrophobic scenes (even the external scenes are rather claustrophobic) mixed with long drawn out shots from a surveillance camera used to record/spy on the protagonists, played by an often awkward Daniel Auteuil and a rather good performance by Juliette Binoche. The tapes were then sent to the protagonists anonymously on VHS tape coupled with violent drawings to threaten them and show that they were being watched by an unknown foe. These surveillance scenes did at first build suspense, but were eventually overused and became tiresome. The plot grew at a slow, but decent pace and asked some interesting questions intermingled with some disturbing images of memories or dreams which I think worked okay. Some of the questions were resolved, but, and here's the big problem, the main mystery of the film was never answered and was not at all dealt with.
How can this happen and why is this alright with so many viewers? It is clumsy film making at best and is obviously a pathetic attempt for writer/director Michael Haneke to admit that he kinda feels a great amount of guilt for something he had done as a child... without actually admitting guilt... sort of. The film ends with no-one taking any blame or feeling any guilt for anything that was done to anyone at all, even to the point of there not even being a culprit for the "threatening" tapes and messages, which was the main plot line.
This film apparently cost eight million euros and somehow got a lot of praise at Cannes on its release, , but looked more like a college project and it seems reason was shared by word of mouth, because it didn't even get half the money back. Too bad that word of mouth didn't reach me. I don't have a problem with slow moving art-house movies with ambiguous endings, I just have a problem with this. The ending was not ambiguous, it simply excluded all suspects of the "crime" and actually made the entire happenings as if they didn't happen. Seriously, what happened next? Did they continue to receive the tapes?
I don't know, maybe I just didn't do anything evil enough as a child to be able to relate to this, but I cannot recommend this film at all. 2 stars.
Without giving too much away, this film does engage the viewer psychologically with almost exclusively claustrophobic scenes (even the external scenes are rather claustrophobic) mixed with long drawn out shots from a surveillance camera used to record/spy on the protagonists, played by an often awkward Daniel Auteuil and a rather good performance by Juliette Binoche. The tapes were then sent to the protagonists anonymously on VHS tape coupled with violent drawings to threaten them and show that they were being watched by an unknown foe. These surveillance scenes did at first build suspense, but were eventually overused and became tiresome. The plot grew at a slow, but decent pace and asked some interesting questions intermingled with some disturbing images of memories or dreams which I think worked okay. Some of the questions were resolved, but, and here's the big problem, the main mystery of the film was never answered and was not at all dealt with.
How can this happen and why is this alright with so many viewers? It is clumsy film making at best and is obviously a pathetic attempt for writer/director Michael Haneke to admit that he kinda feels a great amount of guilt for something he had done as a child... without actually admitting guilt... sort of. The film ends with no-one taking any blame or feeling any guilt for anything that was done to anyone at all, even to the point of there not even being a culprit for the "threatening" tapes and messages, which was the main plot line.
This film apparently cost eight million euros and somehow got a lot of praise at Cannes on its release, , but looked more like a college project and it seems reason was shared by word of mouth, because it didn't even get half the money back. Too bad that word of mouth didn't reach me. I don't have a problem with slow moving art-house movies with ambiguous endings, I just have a problem with this. The ending was not ambiguous, it simply excluded all suspects of the "crime" and actually made the entire happenings as if they didn't happen. Seriously, what happened next? Did they continue to receive the tapes?
I don't know, maybe I just didn't do anything evil enough as a child to be able to relate to this, but I cannot recommend this film at all. 2 stars.
- dante_darcangelo
- 3. Aug. 2011