 It is the beginning
of the holidays. Anna, Georg, and their small child leave for a beautiful house on the
edge of a lake. Fred and Eva, their neighbors, have already arrived. All is peaceful.
While Georg and the boy busy themselves with the boat, Anna is surprised by the arrival of
Peter, a boy who is apparently staying at the neighbor's house. He needs some eggs to get
breakfast ready. Soon after, Paul, Peter's friend, enters on the scene. As from then, all
is a game of perversion and violence that seems without end.It would be just one more suspense film were it not for the unique
skills of director Michael Haneke in placing the banalities of violence in check. In
denouncing the aestheticizing of violence, as he had previously done in The
Benny Video, he questions the intended innocence of the
spectator accomplice, by means of a succession of moments of emotion and analysis, leading
him to become aware of his own role. The same violence that raises audience indices on TV
and ensures millionaire box-office sales in the cinemas, acquires frightening dimensions
in this Haneke film from which no one will, most certainly, leave indifferent. |
