Daniel Auteuil – Movie Musings

Haneke’s fascinating puzzle is a profound and challenging modern masterpiece

Director: Michael Haneke

Cast: Daniel Auteuil (Georges Laurent), Juliette Binoche (Anne Laurent), Maurice Bénichou (Majid), Lester Makedonsky (Pierrot Laurent), Walid Afkir (Majid’s son), Annie Girardot (Georges’s mother), Daniel Duval (Pierre), Bernard Le Coq (Georges’s boss), Nathalie Richard (Mathilde)

Is any film more aptly named than Caché? Haneke’s film keeps its cards so close to its chest, it’s entirely possible revelations remain hidden within it in plain sight. Caché famously ends with a final shot where a possibly crucial meeting between two people we’ve no reason to suspect know each other plays out in the frame so subtly many viewers miss it. It shows how Haneke’s work rewards careful, patient viewing (and Caché is partially about the power of watching and being watched), but also how unknowable the past can be. It’s a chilling and engrossing film that fascinates but never fully reveals itself.

Georges Laurent (Daniel Auteuil) lives a life of success. A wealthy background, host of a successful TV literary debate show and living in an affluent suburb of Paris, he’s married to publisher Anne (Juliette Binoche) and father to young champion swimmer Pierrot (Lester Makedonsky). But there’s a serpent in his Garden of Eden. Georges and Anne are plagued by a stream of videos arriving at their house. These show long, static shots of their home and are accompanied by crude, graphic drawings. Someone is watching their house and the dread that this could escalate at any time is consuming them. But does Georges know more – do the messages chime with guilty memories in his past?

Haneke’s film is a multi-layered masterpiece, a haunting exploration (free of clear answers) into the things we prefer to forget, the hidden horrors we supress. It’s a film all about the shame and guilt buried amongst the everyday. Haneke even shoots the film on hi-definition video so that the surveillance footage of Georges and his home visually merges with the ‘real’ images of the couple. Within that, Caché starts to unpack the hinterland we hold as individuals (and, quite possibly as entire nations) of the guilts of our past that keep bubbling to the surface to bite us.

Caché is shot through with Haneke’s genius for menace and veiled threat. Can you imagine anything creepier than a camera set up outside your home, filming everything you do – but never knowing where it is? It’s an invasion of privacy that is insidious and covered in the additional menace that, at any time, it could escalate to something worse. The creeping, invasive tyranny of surveillance is in every inch of Caché, its omnipresence giving every interaction the feeling of being watched (something Haneke plays up – watch a man watching Anne when she sits in a café with a friend).

So gradually the book-lined world of the Laurents becomes a base under siege, a feeling amplified by Haneke’s mix of smooth camera movements adrift from establishing shots: constantly the camera glides through a space where we feel we neither truly understand the geography or are confident about the time. It’s accentuated by the window-free room the Laurents largely inhabit. In fact, their whole home feels window free, with curtains frequently drawn and rooms plunged into darkness, the family throwing up a shield to protect them from the outside world.

Or is it to cut them off from the unpleasant facts of life? It becomes clear Georges has built a world around himself, where he is the hero and all traces of the unpleasant or disreputable in his past have been dismissed to the dark recesses of memory, never to be accessed. Played with a bull-headed arrogance by Daniel Auteuil, under his assurance Georges is prickly and accusatory, liable to lash out verbally (and perhaps physically, considering the threat he carries in two key scenes). Auteuil masters in the little moments of startled panic and stress that cross Georges’ face, a man so used to a world that matches his needs, that anything questioning that is met with rejection.

It’s why he lies to Anne about his growing suspicions about the source of the tapes. The cartoons hint at a series of (deeply shameful) interactions, when he was a child in the 60s, with a young Algerian boy, Majid, who his parents considered adopting after the death of Majid’s parents. It was Georges lies that forced this boy out of his perfect farm-house into the cold-arms of the unfeeling French orphanage system. This is the original sin of Georges’ life, arguably the foundation of his success – a guilty secret that so haunts and disgusts him, even the slightest mention of it brings out the muscular aggression he otherwise keeps below the surface.

Of course, it’s hard not to see an echo of France’s colonial past. One of the things that works so well with Caché, is that this subtext is there without Haneke ever stressing it. Just as Georges’ lies forced Majid into a life of depression and misery, so France’s treatment of Algeria is the terrible shame the nation would rather forget. Majid’s parents died in a famously brutal stamping out of an Algerian protest in Paris in October 1961 (the deaths of over 200 people at the hands of French government forces only came to light decades later). The anger many show when presented with inconvenient, horrible past deeds (both personal and national), only feels more relevant today with our culture battles over history.

Georges sees himself as a victim of a vicious campaign. But, when Georges meets Majid, played with startling vulnerability by Maurice Bénichou, he seems light years away from the sort of man who could possibly be capable of such a campaign. Indeed, when a video of Georges encounter with Majid is widely shared, it is Georges (as even he admits) who appears the bully and aggressor. Majid has been demonised in Georges’ memory – in his nightmare he becomes an axe-wielding monster-child – but he’s an innocent, who had everything taken from him in a micro-colonialist coup carried out by a 6-year-old Georges. A coup the adult Georges has let himself forget, making him little different from France itself. (We are reminded the cycle continues, with constant background news footage of Iraq, ignored by the Laurents.)

The mistakes repeat themselves, but they don’t trouble the complacent middle-classes who benefit from them. Georges will even use his influence to have Majid and his son bundled into a police van. Of course it leads to an outburst that will shake this world up. Haneke’s films have always been realistic when it comes to the visceral horror of violence, and Caché contains an act of such shocking violence that it will leave the viewer as speechless and distressed as the witnesses.

And still the question hangs: who? It could be anyone. At one-point Georges storms out of his front door to confront the mystery video-sender, only to return to find a video wedged in the door. It’s literally impossible for this video to be placed without him seeing it done. Haneke is so uninterested in the whodunnit part that, perhaps, he’s implying the perpetrator is the director himself, using the mechanics of film-making to entrap the guilty parties. It fits with the coldly intellectual steel-trap part of Haneke’s mind, the part that uses films (like Funny Games) to tell off and preach. What other director would be more likely to set himself up as unseen antagonist in the film?

And does Georges learn anything? He will continue to confront characters who challenge his world view and dispatch (like nations) his guilt to the recesses of memory. His begrudging peace with his wife – a superbly restrained Juliette Binoche, increasingly resentful at her husband’s secrets – seems built on the shaky ground of their continuing mutual comfort. And suspicions linger over his son, an increasingly hostile figure who (just perhaps) is learning more about the flaws of his parents than they would be comfortable with.

Of course, this might all be open to interpretation from multiple angles. After all the film is called Caché. Haneke has hidden enough subtle implications in it that it can reward analysis from multiple angles. Shot with his characteristic discipline that suggests a dark, creeping fear behind every corner, it’s a masterclass in suggestion and paranoia. Brilliantly unsettling and constantly reworking itself before your eyes, it’s a masterpiece.

Luscious scenery and combines with fine acting to produce a sort of French Merchant Ivory

Director: Claude Berri

Cast: Yves Montard (César Soubeyrnan), Daniel Auteuil (Ugolin), Gérard Depardieu (Jean Cadoret), Emmanuelle Béart (Manon Cadoret), Elizabeth Depardieu (Aimée Cadoret), Ernestine Mazurowana (Young Manon), Hippolyte Girardot (Bernard Olivier), Margarita Lozano (Baptistine), Yvonne Gamy (Delphine)

At the time this double bill (which I’ll refer to as Jean de Florette unless specifically referring to the sequel only) were the most successful foreign language films ever released. Shot over seven months, they were also the most expensive French films ever made and garlanded with awards, including a BAFTA for best film. Jean de Florette turned Verdi into the soundtrack for France, while its photography transformed the rural idyll of Provence into a major tourist destination and the dream location for holiday homeowners. The films themselves remain rich, rural tragedies, gorgeous French heritage films, a sort of French Gone with the Wind replayed as Greek tragedy.

Told in two parts – although designed as one complete movie – they tell a story of how greed destroys lives in 1920s rural Provence. César (Yves Montard) is the childless landowner whose only hope of a legacy is his hard-working but dense nephew Ugolin (Daniel Auteuil). Ugolin dreams of growing carnations but the perfect land is frustratingly not for sale. When an argument with the owner leads to his accidental death, the land falls to Jean Cadoret (Gérard Depardieu) hunch-backed former tax collector from the city and son of Florette, the girl who broke César’s heart decades ago when she left the village while he impulsively served in the foreign legion.

César and Ugolin resent Jean – Jean of Florette as they call him – and hatch a plan to see his dream of a rabbit farm fail. They secretly block up the spring on Jean’s land and keep his connection to Florette a secret from the rest of the village, encouraging them to see him as an outsider and hunchbacked bad-luck charm. Ugolin befriends the decent, optimistic and hard-working Jean and watches the farm disintegrate. A decade later, in Manon des Sources, Jean’s daughter Manon (Emmanuele Béart) plots revenge for her father on Ugolin and César.

Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources were adapted from Marcel Pagnol’s novel – written, ironically, after Pagnol’s film Manon des Sources was butchered down by the studio in 1952 from four hours into an abbreviated two. It’s a richly filmed, luscious picture crammed with gorgeous locations, sweeping camerawork and marvellous score that riffs on Verdi. It’s an entertaining story of injustice and comeuppances. It’s first half (Jean de Florette) is an, at-times painful, unfolding of Jean’s inevitable failure. The second (Manon des Sources) sees all those chickens come home to roost as Manon’s suspicions about César and Ugolin’s duplicitousness are confirmed.

But what perhaps made Jean de Florette as successful as it was, is its mix of Merchant Ivory and BBC costume-drama. Many outside of France essentially took it as art because the characters spoke French. But Jean de Florette is a tasteful, classy, very well-made prestige package designed to be easily digestible. Claude Berri marshals events with the skill of a natural producer – he’s effectively a sort of French Richard Attenborough with a great deal of natural talent with actors, but without the true inspiration of the greats. You couldn’t mistake Jean de Florette as something made by Carné let alone Godard or Truffaut. It’s decidedly too carefully, tastefully made for that.

Which is not to say it isn’t in many ways a very fine film. Its construction is well-executed across its two parts. Berri makes clear that – for all the film showed a picture post-card view of France, encouraged to promote tourism and ‘traditional values’ by the government – the village our film is centred around is rife with prejudice and underlying hostility. It’s all too easy to for them to take against Jean: not only he is an outsider, he’s a tax-collector and a hunchback to boot. Prejudice naturally sets them against him (the villagers gleefully watch this “city man” destroy himself vainly trying to turn his dry land fertile). Manon des Sources makes clear the whole village at the very least suspected the spring had been deliberately dammed but effectively couldn’t be bothered to help.

It’s not a surprise as Jean’s techniques are totally alien to the traditionalists. Played by Depardieu with a wide-eyed enthusiasm, guileless honesty and trust, Jean takes on farming as if its another mathematical problem. He has books full of calculations and productivity rates he expects to hit, covering everything from rabbit breeding to the daily amount of soil and water needed for crops. He is prepared for anything except the cruelty of humans and the weather (Berri makes clear that, even with one arm tied around his back by the spring being blocked, he nearly manages to pull it off).

Instead, his super-human efforts come to naught. Forced to walk miles a day to carry gallons of water back to his farm to irrigate his land, he starts to resemble the weighted down donkey he drags with him. Rubicons are crossed one by one: even his wife’s necklace is eventually called on to be pawned, for all his promises that it would never come to that (fitting the Zolaish tragedy here, the necklace turns out to be worth sod all). Ugolin does everything he can to befriend and support Jean without helping him, even ploughing the land for him when Jean comes close to finding the hidden water supply. The events beat down Depardieu, here in one of his finest “man of the soil” peasant roles, until he is literally left shouting at the heavens, imploring God to give him a break.

This makes is all the easier to despise César and Ugolin, especially as Berri cuts frequently to these hypocrites giggling at their own deviousness and Jean’s suffering. It makes Manon des Sources – arguably the even more rewarding part – all the more satisfying as we watch the two of them slowly destroyed, events replaying themselves from the other direction. Manon des Sources features a performance of Artemis-like grace from Emmanuelle Béart as the older version of Jean’s daughter (the younger noticeably never trusted Ugolin), whose beauty enraptures Ugolin and who in turn dams the source of the village’s water to expose the crimes against her father.

It leads to a series of shattering reveals that break César and Ugolin from their satisfaction and complacency. These two villains are portrayed in masterful performances by Yves Montard and Daniel Auteuil. Under buck teeth and a foolish grin, Auteuil is sublime as a man who has it in him to be decent but is all too easily led by his forceful uncle. He regrets his actions, while never making an effort to reform and reverts all too easily into a love-struck Gollum, spying on Manon and literally sewing her lost ribbon into his skin. He’s a pathetic figure.

Montard has the juiciest part, which flowers into one of true tragic force in Manon des Sources. César is a man whose life of regret and loneliness has turned him into a bitter old man, grasping, greedy and hungry for a legacy. He treasures the few possessions he has of Florette – faded letters and a single hair comb – like relics and subconsciously can’t bring himself to actually meet her son. Suppressed sadness makes him every more tyrannical and foreboding. But Manon explodes this exterior, as events and revelations strip away all he holds dear. It culminates in a breath-taking sequence of raw grief from Montard – which depends on the magnetic power of his eyes – as his last delusions are stripped away and the true horror of his actions exposed to him.

It’s this emotional power that gives the two parts of Jean de Florette its force and impact and lift it the higher plain of its costume drama roots. It may be a very self-consciously prestige picture, designed to appeal to the masses, but Berri’s conservative style is matched with a great skill of drawing powerful performances from the actors. He does this in spades with his four leads and events eventually gain, through their performances, some of the force of a Provence Greek Tragedy. Jean de Florette manages to avoid melodrama and provides real dramatic meat and, while it is not high art, it’s certainly very high drama.