Funny Games

Aroview: Michael Haneke’s disturbing, self-reflexive examination of violence, and violence as entertainment, in which two young men dressed in tennis apparel, get their kicks by holding a wealthy family to ransom in their remote holiday retreat.

The kind of gruelling, confrontational cinema that can be exhilarating because you know it isn’t the work of a cheap hack – the director is like a mad yet fiercely intelligent professor who takes private pleasure in sadistic experiments while demonstrating it immorality. Whether his academic objectives are justifiable or not is a moot point, but it’s harder to argue his skill as a master manipulator and genuine courage as an artist.

NZ International Film Festival 1998

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