2005-10-05
$8.7M
117 min
George, host of a television show focusing on literature, receives videos shot on the sly that feature his family, along with disturbing drawings that are difficult to interpret. He has no idea who has made and sent him the videos. Progressively, the contents of the videos become more personal, indicating that the sender has known George for a long time.
On the face of it, "Georges" (Daniel Auteuil) and wife "Anne" (Juliette Binoche) are a successfully married couple. Both working in publishing, he has his own review programme on television whilst their teenage son "Pierrot" (Lester Makedonsky) remains pretty distant from their professional and social lives. When "Georges" starts receiving anonymous VHS cassettes things become much more tense and the strains on this family more pronounced. These tapes initially begin by surveilling their home, but gradually they become more penetrative and invasive. The police can't do anything and their neighbours have seen nothing untoward locally. Then he discovers what might just be a clue and that takes him to "Majid" (Maurice Bénichou) who lives with his grown-up son (Walid Afkir). It transpires that his family has history with this man. In fact, he is all but an half-brother to "Georges" and after a rather frank conversation he assures him that he has nothing to do with these intimidatory packages. When "Pierrot" makes an unscheduled overnight stay with a friend, the parents become frenzied and it looks like whoever has set out to wreck their lives might just have accomplished their task! Pretty much from the start, Auteuil is on good form as the man about to blow his top. His character is becoming more and more frustrated and his portrayal really counters well with Binoche's sparingly but potently delivered wife who is largely unaware of all the pieces of her husband's familial jigsaw as they fall into place. When tragedy strikes - only a matter of time - the tension is raised another notch, but will we ever discover who is doing what to whom? Or why? The backstory here is as important as what's going on presently, and that information isn't presented as fluidly as I'd have liked. We are not really given much information to go on, and when we are it is almost as if it's there to justify the plot we are seeing unfold rather than the other way around. That said, it's still quite a tensely directed and paced affair that is worth watching.
