Director's Chair - Hidden

Charles Harris is the director of Footloose Films, whose credits include the international award winning Paradise Grove. This month, he gives us his take on French thriller Hidden - so read ahead for our Indie director's Indie choice!

Hidden (Caché) Right, it's a shot of a street and... nothing's happening. I mean, really, nothing's happening, not like when you're watching a crap drama where people talk bollocks and walk about a lot but really nothing happens. No, this a locked-off, full colour, stereo sound, wide shot of a street and NOTHING'S HAPPENING. And, you know, it's actually great. Really? Yes, really. This is "Hidden" by Michael Haneke and what you see is not what you get.

Time passes and, no shit Sherlock, even more nothing just happened. A cyclist passed. Then a car. It's like one of those art house movies of the 60s, called "The Meaning of Meaning" or "Watching The Frame," where you get to watch a corner of the director's bedroom for ninety minutes and it's all a metaphor for the meaningless of existence, the stupidity of audiences and the ease with which the gullible can be relieved of their money by self-important artistic types with beards. But this is different.

"How's it different?" asks my mate Hedgehog, scratching his balls and pouring another slug of Bombay Sapphire for his soul-mate Colleen.

Well, listen - those voices you can hear? In French? They're talking about this video we're looking at. There's Georges (Daniel Auteuil) - his wife, Anne, found this tape, dropped through their letter box and it's freaking him out, because someone just took a 2 hour shot of his front door. Soon there'll be another anonymous video, and another, and threatening pictures of people streaming blood, and Georges and Anne (Juliette Binoche) are going to get seriously stressed.

What's it mean? Who's stalking them and why? Can they find out before that blood starts gushing? Does Georges have a secret buried deep in his past? If you're not riveted to the end, you don't deserve to have eyeballs.

It's a brilliant idea. Haneke's made a mainstream (almost) thriller that gets mainstream (almost) audiences to watch art house installation-type videos - and like it.

Colleen tips down the Bombay Sapphire with one hand while she blow-dries Marie from down the road with the other, and says in her opinion the whole film is a complex metaphor for post-colonial guilt following French atrocities against Algerians and explores the mutual mistrust that grew up between both colonists and colonised before and after liberation.

Hedgehog nods as he eats the last of the organic pretzels - he likes the self-referential use of video to manipulate the audience in an act of voyeurship and implicate us in the flaws of the central character.

Myself, I just think it's a great way to make a thriller. Clever set-up, intriguing characters, twists like a mountain road, and at least one really massive spurt of blood.

What more could you want?

Charles Harris