and Brady Corbett, dressed in white with matching gloves, come to their house, ostensibly to borrow some eggs, and begin subjecting them to a series of increasingly sadistic games.

Two things distinguish Funny Games from most US home-invasion movies, the sort which use violence for audience kicks.

First, almost all of the violence is off-screen, so the audience doesn't get any kind of cathartic release from it. "I really don't want to be part of this violence pornography of the mass media," Haneke says.

Second, Pitt's character will turn to the audience and ask, "Do you think they have a chance of winning?" or, "You want a real ending, with plausible plot development, don't you?"

Such theatrical asides are intended by Haneke to make the viewer - in particular the American

viewer - feel complicit in the violence being perpetrated on screen.

"Funny Games was always made with American audiences in mind, since its subject is Hollywood's attitude towards violence," Haneke told an interviewer recently. "I've been accused of 'raping' the audience in my films, and I admit that - all movies assault the viewer in one way or another. What's different about my films is this: I'm trying to rape the viewer into independence."

American critics aren't buying that, though.

"I picture Haneke laughing, having once again succeeded in shocking the bourgeoisie," steamed the critic for New York magazine. "That's the thing about vapid provocateurs. No matter how wretched their work, they think the joke is always on us."

In this case, it looks like it is.