theatrical manipulation

His films like *Gone Girl* and *The Game* obsessively explore manipulation through unreliable narration, performative deception, and characters constructing false realities.

His melodramas (*All About My Mother*, *Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown*) treat cinema itself as theatrical performance, blurring artifice and authenticity through artifice.

Films like *Funny Games* directly manipulate the audience through formal games and meta-theatrical moments, making viewers complicit in the violence they witness.