Caché

This superbly acted and visually impeccable psychological thriller by Austrian artsploitation specialist Haneke is, by his standards, relatively accessible: It will tie your guts in knots rather than turning your hair white the way 1999's hellish Funny Games will.

Caché centers on an upper-crust French couple whose bubble of complacency springs a leak when an unknown stalker begins videotaping their daily routines and sending them the tapes. The husband (Auteuil), an arrogant celebrity intellectual, begins to suspect a link between the harassment and an Algerian family who once worked on his parents' estate. But as he gets closer to the heart of the matter, he conceals his guilty knowledge from his terrified wife (Binoche). When his evasions are exposed by subsequent tapes, their marriage begins to combust.

As a meditation on memory, identity, and deceit, Caché resembles Cronenberg's A History of Violence, although Caché's allegorical payload is more narrowly political and, in light of the late immigrant uprisings in the French suburbs, more immediately topical.

Considered as a thriller, Caché may disappoint those who require a tidy denouement À la Agatha Christie, though the film's ending is arguably rendered less cryptic by an easily missed detail in the lingering final shot.