Michael Haneke’s “Cache” is what you’d get, I suspect, if you crossed Alfred Hitchcock with Costa-Gavras — a psychological thriller against a political backdrop, although the latter is so subtle you might miss it.

It begins with a mystery, a series of videos being deposited on the doorstep of a married couple making it clear they’re being stalked, but the film isn’t so much about what happens as why, and the answer to that — known only to the husband — is bound up with nothing less than European colonial history and class divisions in modern France.

Haneke keeps you off balance from the first shot, hinting at the possibility that anything you see may, in fact, be one of the videos. And keep a close eye on that long, final shot of the school letting out. It contains an answer to a crucial question — and, maddeningly, raises more troubling ones.

“Cache” (2005) Starring Daniel Auteuil, Juliette Binoche, Maurice Benichou, Walid Afkir and Lester Makedonsky. 117 minutes. Rated R for brief, strong violence. French, with subtitles.

— David Bates
The News-Register