20 French Films You Must See Before You Die

1. Caché (2005)

The true masters of suspense celluloid understand the severity of the reveal. Nothing is more important that absorbing your spectator, enticing them in and lulling into a false sense of security below expertly pulling the rug from beneath their feet. It is utterly invaluable to the genre and the craft. Across the many breadths of filmmaking, few pictures have managed to perfect this skill quite so emphatically as Michael Haneke achieves with Caché. Home is where the heart is, and indeed the horrors as Haneke's gloriously intrusive lens captures the domestic tribulations of Georges and Anne (Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche); an upper-class Parisian couple who are terrorised by anonymous videotapes that appear on their front porch and hint at dark childhood memories of the husband. Beautifully adhering to '"bourgeois guilt", the master auteur attacks the notion that money provides security by exposing his character's most vulnerable, sensitive shades. His camera hangs longingly in-frame, as if he is the composer of the mysterious mail; forever dwelling on the emotional and psychological torment game which develops. As Caché progresses, the tension forever mounts, forcing the viewer into a suffocating choke-hold, and as soon as the grasp feels like it may slacken, Haneke surges forward; blasting the gut and leaving us sweaty and panting. Even greater than the organic tension development, the unbearable atmosphere, the incredible performances and towering visual construction is the delivery of the answers you are now desperate for. Turn off the film before the credits have finished rolling, and you have just denied yourself the missing piece of the jigsaw. Haneke hides that all-important factoid here, and when you find it, you'll want to restart the film to try and slot it into place. It is cinema of an entirely different level: never rivaled, never bettered.