Michael Haneke describes the making of Code Inconnu (Code Unknown) in his usual enigmatic way: "It's always very hard, impossible even, for me to sum up in a few sentences this 'thing' (which ends up becoming strangely complex) on which I have spent most of my time and energy for the past year and a half.

"Moreover," he continues, "I think that Code Inconnu, even more so than my other films, resists this process and is harder to reduce to a single 'theme'. I think that, by reducing it to its most obvious ideas ­ the Babylonian confusion of languages, the incapacity to communicate, the coldness of the consumer society, xenophobia, etc ­ we cannot avoid a mere string of clichés."

Sounds cryptic? Haneke has always felt that his psychodramas have to be seen rather than spoken about. Born in 1942, he studied philosophy, psychology and theatre in Vienna. After working for German television (1967-70), he went off on his own as an independent writer-director. In the meantime, he kept up his other profession as stage director in Austria and Germany.

Murderer (1991) ­ these can generally be categorised as the psychodramas (or, if you will, psychological studies of pathological cases) that form his vision as an original auteur.

Discovered for Cannes by Pierre-Henri Deleau, Haneke is best known for his trilogy of psychological studies presented in the Directors' Fortnight, each dealing with emotionally disturbed individuals representative of a morally ruptured society. In these films, people have lost both the ability and the desire to communicate ­ the phenomenon of "glaciation," as Haneke terms it.

In The Seventh Continent (1989) deranged parents lock themselves into their apartment, poison their daughter and then commit a double suicide.

In Benny's Video (1992), self-centred middle-class parents attempt to cover up a senseless murder committed by their lonely teenaged son, who is living a stunted childhood with his camcorder and has completely lost touch with reality.

In 71 Fragments Of A Chronology Of Chance (1994), an emotionally disturbed university student opens fire with a gun in a bank and randomly kills a number of people he doesn't even know.

When Haneke topped this trilogy off with a coda, Funny Games (1997), chosen for the competition at Cannes, it became a cause célèbre by virtue of the shock effect that rippled through the audience and drove the hypersensitive from their seats. It is the weird tale of a pair of murderous psychopaths who appear suddenly on the scene at a vacation villa, where a family is driven to the limits of an emotional breakdown before the murders are actually committed ­ at which point the lunatics move on to their next victims.

Asked in an interview whether these films also criticise the way contemporary reality is portrayed in movies, Haneke agreed. "It becomes a sine qua non for every film-maker in the age of media manipulation," he says. "I can't take anybody quite seriously if their work doesn't reflect that. You can't act as if you were still in the 19th century and as if reality could be reduced in its entirety. That's absurd. But that's what approximately 90% of all directors do. People want to be reassured, not forced to think. But the purpose of art has always been to question the status quo."

As for the inspiration behind Code Unknown, Haneke responds: "It all started with Juliette Binoche, who called one day and asked if we could work together. I've always wanted to make a film about modern-day migration... as a result of different factors (though the primary reasons were and are economic ­ the disparity between rich and poor). There are already two cities in Europe where this fact is obvious, and where a truly multi-cultural society has developed. One of them is Paris."

Code Unknown opens on a busy boulevard in the city, where a crumpled piece of paper drops into the out stretched hands of a beggar woman. This is the starting point for a film that boasts a varied cast of very different but somehow interrelated characters. There's Anne (Juliette Binoche), a young actress who is about to become a star in the cinema. Her boyfriend, a war photographer, is hardly ever at home, and his younger brother has no interest in taking over their father's farm.

Add to these an African music teacher at a deaf-mute institute, a beggar from Romania fearful of being deported and a handful of other multi-cultural characters, and you are confronted with ­ so Haneke fears ­ a Babylonian confusion of languages, the incapacity to communicate, the coldness of the consumer society, xenophobia and other movie clichés he labours to break.

Ron Holloway