Brilliant French thriller.
TV presenter Georges Laurent (Daniel Auteuil) and his wife Anne (Juliette Binoche) start receiving mysterious video cassettes at their front door. These VHS tapes show footage of their own home being spied on and are accompanied by childish drawings of violent imagery. They are also subjected to mysterious phone messages. This premise becomes more creepy still when it becomes clear that whoever is watching and threatening them seems to know everything about Georges’ life from childhood onwards. The police aren’t interested, in the absence of an actual crime, but the situation intensifies as it begins to draw in their son (Lester Makedonsky as Pierrot) and a key individual from Georges’ personal history (Maurice Bénichou as Majid). In trying to unravel the mystery of what’s going on, the couple instead begin to unravel their marriage.
I love the way that you think you’re watching a scene in the usual way, but then it becomes clear that you’re watching the surveillance tape of it instead. This is a neat innovation in a film that’s otherwise unfussy and straightforward in terms of its sets and direction. Indeed, a lot of it is deliberately humdrum.
It’s superbly unsettling. As the plot escalates, you expect to get closer to the truth of the events. But this enigmatic film deliberately keeps you guessing and refuses to offer simplistic solutions. As such, it presents bigger questions that stay with you.
