A political allegory wrapped inside a tense mystery thriller, Caché (Hidden) is the latest film from provocative Austrian director Michael Haneke (The Piano Teacher). An upper middle-class Parisian couple (played by Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche) receives an anonymous videotape that consists of a single, static shot of their house.

There is no note with the cassette, no indication of who sent it or why. More tapes arrive, accompanied by child-like drawings of a primitive stick figure with a violent slash of red exploding from its head. The couple grows increasingly uneasy as they try to figure out why they are being targeted.

On one level, Caché is an unsettling whodunit. But, like nearly all of Haneke's films, it is also a critique of contemporary western society, touching upon issues of guilt and responsibility, alienation and repression, the media as manipulator, and the arrogance and smugness of the First World towards developing nations. Interestingly, the film does not have the vocabulary of a thriller. Instead of traditional suspense techniques, it consists almost exclusively of lengthy (4 minutes and longer) wide shots. The camera moves only slightly, if at all, and there is little activity within the frame. Such calculated absence of human activity and camera movement would seem to be boring but, in fact, has exactly the opposite effect: helping to fuel the enormous tension which fills the screen.

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