Code Unknown (2000, France/Germany/Romania)

I got my wish! Even though my next movie of the year was a Michael Haneke film, no one died violently! Code Unknown is the warmest of Haneke's films that I've seen. It's still rather stark and narratively disruptive, but at least it seems to evince some belief in humanity. The film has no real plot, rather it intertwines narrative fragments that follow four people who meet at random on a Parisian street. The main thread is about an actress, Anne (Juliette Binoche), and her lover, Georges. Another follows Georges' brother and father on their farm outside of the city, a third a young man of African decent and his family, and a fourth a Romanian beggar woman who travels back and forth between Paris and her homeland.

Some of the fragments are merely short bursts, little more than two or three minutes in length. Others have a bit more substance - the two I found most affecting followed Anne, the first as she fights with Georges in a supermarket, and another as she is harassed on the subway. The fragments dip in and out of the larger story of each character's life, lives that we see only in moments. The more of Haneke's work I watch, the more impressed I am by his style. In Code Unknown, each fragment is filmed in one take, even the 10-minute opening shot that follows people back and forth on a busy city street. As in his other films, he favors medium shots, and follows his characters closely. It's both meditative and unsettling, even when used in the dramatic genre rather than the thriller. I'm looking forward to seeing how Haneke approaches a Kafka adaptation - his version of The Castle is up next on my queue.