Michael Haneke, like Stanley Kubrick, is a director I feel polarized about in his extremities: he's profound and shallow at once, a technical wizard with oh-so-serious commentary that comes to us through cruelty. He's not as bloated as Kubrick -- those bloated "meanings" in Kubrick's films are ultimately worthless, impressive cinematically but empty -- in that he addresses somewhat thoughtful issues seriously, but it's hard to discern whether it's the issues he takes seriously or his minimal long-take aesthetic. "The Piano Teacher" was too vile for me to handle; I have some gay friends who love it, like John Waters does, presumably for the outrageous nastiness perpetrated by its pint-sized redheaded vixen. I thought "Cache" was an original statement, even considering its "surveillance" theme is the kind of thing that college students dust off for brownie points, and I found myself admiring "Funny Games U.S." despite most American critics attacking it for the kinds of things I normally despise in other movies. "Code Unknown," closer to "Cache," is sort of like a serious-minded "Crash," a movie dealing with race and people being victimized with a relatively subdued approach.
Son of Gascogne (1995, Pascal Aubier)
A charming French film farce which treads two lines simultaneously, that of the history of New Wave (by setting the story around the possible son of a fictitious French film star, incorporating '60s film clips and recreations a la "The Dreamers") and of the light love story between the boy and a girl. The points it makes about the metaphorically "lost" children of the New Wave -- in essence, young cinephiles in the '90s, or simply young lovers in the '90s -- aren't hammered home, but rather made felt through the film's attachment to the boy and the girl. It's a New Wave film about the New Wave. Just look at his shirts!
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