Have you ever felt, that you have just witnessed a slow dismantling of barriers, combined with a gentle, but decided, brush against your false self, like an insisting philosopher, urging you to search yourself ? Well .. That is how i felt viewing this movie.
Do not think that this is a "whodunnit" murder mystery. Yes i know it is the superficial plot and story, that you think at first that you are supposed to burry yourself in. But slowly, the sensitive viewer, will uncover a hidden story (hence the title) underneath the cinematic banalities, that you think you are experiencing in the subjective tracking shots. The stationary objective shots, on the other hand, are like huge canvasses of breathtaking moving picture art, that will cut right down to your soul like a knife through butter.
Now nobody can define art, since it is also a subjective operation, so this movie challenges you to take a completely individual take on .. what is it all about. I will therefore keep from you what i think this film is about, because i would not want to destroy your joy of watching a movie of this caliber by putting any notions in your head beforehand. Just make sure that you make sure that you are in the mood for something that demands a lot from your mind, when you take the plunge.
It is not really artsy, it is not provocative, it is not pretentious ... The director has gone to great lengths to make sure that the sense of watching a movie has been eliminated. It succeeds instead in dragging you, willing or not, into your unconscious. That is where you need to stumble around to find what this is about. the director wants you to swing uncomfortably between objectivity and subjectivity, which can be translated into false vs. true, reality vs. illusion, true self vs. false self etc... the potential crossing of this barrier is the genius of the movie and the treat you are going to enjoy .. hopefully
Choosing possibly the two best known modern french actors in the leading roles, could have been a disaster, but instead Daniel Auteuil as Georges and Juliette Binoche as Anne are perfect as the middleclass couple, whos marriage hangs together only by their respective urge to keep their artificial facades intervoven by other peoples expectations. They are a house of incompatible cards, ready to tumble, if either of their true selves would come to the surface. This paper thin cutural protecting film is perfectly portrayed by these great actors. A perfect fit in my opinion. They are both almost pure fiction, hence their relation to books of fiction. They have brought their need for fiction into their home, by surrounding themselves and their family in fiction, shown by their dining table surrounded by books of fiction
The director is very sure of himself and he uses some anti-establishment shots that sort of breaks down, how you are supposed to shoot a scene. He uses framing shots that are very difficult to interpret and sometimes very bold cutting to poke at your sense of "how am i supposed to understand this".
More than once i felt like i was flipping through Robert Frank' s "The Americans", a cult photo art book from the late 50s. It has the same uneasy feeling that there is something down there, but i am not sure what it is. Is it something in me, my true self or is it the culture induced false self coming to attack me and tell me what to think and how i am supposed to see the world?. Only the greatest artists are able to put you in that spot.
rating: 10/10