Philip Cunliffe
posted 14 February 2006

Hidden has been showered with critical accolades and festival prizes, and openly acclaimed as the 'first great film of the twenty first century'. Judging by the theme, my hope is rather that it is a film that will say more about the twentieth century than the twenty first.

The film is ostensibly about a white, upper middle class French family, that is terrorised by a stalker who sends the family video tapes of their home wrapped in sinister cartoonish pictures. But it is only the father of the family, Georges (played by Daniel Auteil), the successful host of a Newsnight Review-style TV arts programme, who can decipher the mysterious messages. It is quickly established that the campaign of terror is somehow linked to a family of Algerian immigrants, linked to Georges' childhood.

But really, the film is about imperialism or colonialism or oppression or racism or something. If you can't figure it out, don't worry - you'll get slapped in the face by what feels like a solid ten minutes of nothing more happening on screen than a TV news report from Iraq. And if you still don't get it, then you'll have the two protagonists anxiously talking about where their son might be when he doesn't come home from school, with the TV blasting scenes of chaos on the Gaza Strip all the while. Or maybe it's a parable of the surveillance society, and what happens when the camera penetrates middle class privacy for a change. Again, if you're left in any doubt, you can think about it as the Georges and his wife watch and re-watch the tapes sent to them.

Don't get me wrong - technically speaking, it's a fine film. The delicate sense of menacing ambiguity that the film spins is finely crafted, and the acting is superb. Even that annoying French actress from The English Patient (or was it Amélie? I always get the two confused - at any rate the one who isn't Catherine Deneuve) puts in a compelling performance as Georges' increasingly exasperated and estranged wife. [That'll be Juliette Binoche, who was in The English Patient and is nothing like as annoying as Amélie - ed.]

But if the film were a character study focused on the peculiar nature of lingering childhood guilt and repressed memory, that would be fine. Instead, Haneke has given us a metaphorical monolith, whose shadow blocks out any rays of psychological nuance and insight. The film is transparently constructed so that the audience feels guilty for identifying with the white middle classes. As the strain on Georges and his marriage gradually intensifies, we are browbeaten into seeing Georges as a sham, nothing more than an aggressive, mendacious and self-absorbed bully. But in fact there's nothing for the audience to feel guilty about - Georges' behaviour is entirely understandable, as his family and career are so insidiously and unjustifiably threatened.

In one scene, where Georges is editing a tape of his TV show, you can feel the director tugging you to your feet - 'How dare la sâle bourgeoisie sit around discussing Rimbaud while there are Algerians living dans les banlieues!' But the only dirty bourgeois in this picture is the one sitting in the director's chair. The film radiates the worst, most patronising kind of bourgeois self-loathing and liberal guilt. The Algerian characters are inscrutable losers and victims, whose entire existence is defined by a pathetic howl for recognition of their suffering by the white middle class. If only Georges felt more guilty for what he did as a child, then France would be a land of multiracial harmony. Even in the film's grisly denouement, we are led to believe that somehow the white middle class is responsible. The mystery of the stalking is never quite unravelled, the better to forestall resolution and leave the amorphous cloud of guilt intact. But the only guilt I have is that I was fooled by a Guardian review in to spending money on a film that I really did think could be the 'first great film of the twenty first century'. There, I admitted it, I do read the Guardian film reviews.