Hidden a.k.a. Caché (2005)

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.

Cosmopolis (2012)

A super-rich, super-powerful businessman in search of a haircut travels across New York City in a hi-tech limousine. Strange, scary, violent things happen. He’s joined at various points by expert advisors – on financial markets, on modern theoretical thinking, and (by Juliette Binoche) on buying art.

This disturbing film is David Cronenberg’s adaptation of Don DeLillo’s short novel from 2003. It’s difficult to work out if it’s more Cronenbergian than DeLillo-esque. The former’s deliberately ugly visuals and horror elements are distinctive. The latter’s ultra-dry, play-like dialogue is also prominent, although it’s less funny here than it is on the page – even though (or perhaps because) the film adaptation is fairly faithful to the novel.

Robert Pattinson stars as Eric Packer and Sarah Gadon plays his “wife”, although their marriage is more of a farcical abstraction than a reality – another of the deliberately absurd elements that push the narrative into surreal and existential territory.

The problem with the film is that it succeeds so well in its aim to be cold and cerebral that you wonder what you might actually gain from watching it. If the characters don’t care about anything, why should we care about them? And therefore it starts to feel as shallow and empty as its subject matter.

Chocolat (2000)

Romantic comedy-drama. Restless spirit Juliette Binoche and her young daughter arrive in a small and small-minded French town in 1959. She opens a chocolate shop and slowly begins to transform the lives of the locals with the exotic, seductive treats she prepares. The ever-reliable Judi Dench is her cranky old landlady, who suffers from diabetes and family discord. Johnny Depp is a river gypsy, fellow outsider and, inevitably, becomes her love interest. Alfred Molina plays Comte de Reynaud, the repressive mayor who regards everything Binoche does as a threat to his control of the town. Best of all is Lena Olin as the abused wife and pretty thief Josephine, who becomes her friend.

The film is slow to get going and I was close to giving up with it in the first 20 minutes. It eventually draws you in, despite being far from “my kind of thing”. There’s some silly semi-mystical fluff about the north wind, and at times it’s all a bit too polite and simplistic. Binoche uses chocolate like a benevolent drug dealer – part sorcerer, part Nigella Lawson. Plus, it wasn’t very imaginatively shot. There are weighty themes (prejudice vs. tolerance, imprisonment vs. freedom, religious oppression vs. true enlightenment) that might make you think a bit – but only a bit. Binoche is charming and easy to like, ultimately eroding any lingering cynicism.