By tradition, a movie has to have a good storyline, coherent narration and a satisfying resolution. Now two out of three don’t have to be bad, if the two can adequately compensate. Cache (“Hidden”) is one film that appears to neither have a point nor a resolution. Apparently, those qualities make it a favorite at the European Film Festival, garnering nominations for Best Film, Best Actor (Après vous’ good Samaritan waiter Daniel Auteuil), Best Actress (Juliette Binoche), Best Cinematography, Best Screenplay (director Michael Haneke) and Best Editor. On Hollywood-loving American soil, it is a different matter entirely.

At an advance screening, the publicist informed the attendees to stay to the end of the closing credits for one more sequence. This is aptly noted on the RSVP letter: “Please be sure to sit through the entire closing credit sequence of the film.” But judging by the baffled, bewildered looks of the attendees, what is eventually delivered after the last credit is a short end of the stick. Like myself, most of them probably have not seen a Michael Haneke film and are understandably befuddled. Cache’s ending is abrupt. That or it does not have one. Or that there is a message the director is trying to make and the film’s story is a means to that end.

I will present my interpretation of the film, bearing in mind that it may not be the absolute correct take. Cache begins with an overhead shot of the front entrance of a house. After two-and-a-half minutes of the same stationary shot, dialogue is heard of a man and a woman commenting on it. The shot then goes into rewind, and the audience realizes for the first time they are looking at a video footage playing within the story. Someone has been sending the man, referred to as Georges (Auteuil), tapes containing hour-long recordings of the same thing – the front of his house. He does not know who sends them, and neither does his wife Anne (Binoche) – the woman in the dialogue. The tapes come with crayon sketches of faces with red smear across the mouth or neck, as if gouging out blood. Not only that, they get more personal as the footage location moves to an old house where he was born, and another tape tracks down the street and rests at the front door of an apartment belonging to a middle-aged Algerian man named Majid (Maurice Bénichou). Majid’s history of having once worked for Georges’ parents is used by the director to set him up as the suspect behind the tapes.

Georges Laurent is a TV personality. The volumes of videos and books on his living room shelf indicate he is not only well-read but also well-watched. Anne Laurent works, but her occupation is not clear and ultimately not crucial to the story. Son Pierrot (Lester Makedonsky) is a young pretty face who has unspoken issues. The only clear fact is that they have no connection with the tapes. There is a good showing to demonstrate the harmful effects of stalking acts. Georges acts irrationally, Anne distrusts him, Majid’s life is consequently thrown in disarray, Pierrot disappears suddenly, and Majid’s son (Walid Afkir) takes over as the suspect after Majid inexplicably kills himself.

Being that Cache is an auteur work – written and directed by Haneke – some departures from traditional filmmaking are expected. Except for the closing minutes, which is unexpected. It is interesting to note that the film adopts the template of a literary mystery but does not actually tie up loose ends or connect the dots. The identity of the provocateur(s) responsible for the tapes is never revealed and, as the title word says in English, not meant to be so. Voyeurism, especially the hidden cameras types, thrives on the person not knowing that he or she is being watched, like those “caught on hidden camera” shows and news segments. Haneke takes them and show the perspective of the person being watched, namely Georges, to explore their destructive effects on his life. More importantly, the “hidden” stalkings will continue no matter how much precautions Georges takes. Even a simple act of pulling the blinds on all the bedroom windows will not stop his life from being a state of disruption, paranoia and fear. Thus the abrupt conclusion, a good five-minute stationary shot, that shows but not necessarily implicates Majid’s son (or so it appears) taking Pierrot aside (or so it appears) to talk to him privately (over what, you wonder?). Could someone be videotaping the whole thing? The use of stationary shot, an aesthetic cue that the subject is being watched within the story, implies that.

Being that Cache is about the message of the story than the story itself, much of the conflicting plotlines can be excused. Majid and his son deny responsibility for the hidden video recording Georges threatening Majid in the latter’s apartment; crayon sketches harks back to incidences in Majid’s childhood that only Majid and Georges know about, which are referred to in Georges’ dreams and by brief single shots of a kid coughing up blood. Both suggest Majid (or his son) is the suspect but is intentionally not followed through. An ambiguous, albeit filmsy, setup of an extra-marital affair between Anne and a co-worker that Pierrot misconstrues as an act of betrayal and retaliates against his mother. How Pierrot comes to know about it is never revealed, implicitly or explicitly.

Binoche gives a terrific performance showing the vulnerability and anger (at Georges) in Anne, but I doubt the general movie-going audience would want to sit through this film to see her. Not when her other release this year, Bee Season, offers a more satisfying, less cerebral-challenged fare. Auteuil, delightfully humorous in Après vous, is seriously intense here. He can be threatening, paranoid and irrational all at the same time, and remain connected to Georges’ humanity. Maurice Bénichou and Walid Afkir provide interesting profiles as Majid and son respectively; they play them as innocent victims, contrary to Georges’ belief in their guilt. Makedonsky has only one scene to prove his onscreen tenacity – Pierrot’s retaliation against his mother – and pulls through.