I have now watched this movie twice. The first time, I was fucking confused. I just didn't get it. So I put it on the shelf to be re-visited later. Yesterday, I gave it another shot. It still made no sense to me. I had to look it up on Wikipedia to figure out what it's actually about.
Georges (Daniel Auteuil) and Anne (Juliette Binoche) Laurent are an upper-middle class Parisian couple with a twelve-year-old son. Georges is a successful writer turned public TV host and Anne works for a publishing company. Then they start receiving video cassettes at their house. It's benign, just someone, for whatever reason, filming the outside of their house. Then little creepy drawings start accompanying the tapes, and they start going to other people: Georges' boss, their son's school. All the tapes and drawings have to do with a barely remembered secret from Georges' childhood.
In 1961, there was an anti-Arab riot in Paris that the movie references. I knew tensions had always been high in France with leftover colonial bitterness and more recent terrorism but, not being French, that's not something that I think about every day. I certainly wasn't prepared for a film that alludes to the incident while exploring bourgeois guilt and disowning responsibility.
The film moves with glacial slowness and events just don't seem connected at all. Michael Haneke is one of those directors that people rave about, but I just don't get the appeal. Granted, I haven't seen Amour, that's still in my queue, but at this moment, I am not a fan.
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