Retro IONCINEMA.com

Top 100 Most Anticipated Films of 2012: #2. Michael Haneke’s Love

We haven’t been this excited about senior citizen couplehood since Bergman’s Saraband. Not that we have any problems with the more extreme samples in his filmography, but we welcome this change of pace for Haneke. Kudos to the Austrian filmmaker for tackling a rarely addressed subject matter head-on and for employing octogenarian screen legends Emmanuelle Riva (Hiroshima Mon Amour) and Jean-Louis Trintignant (The Conformist). The film also happens to be a third pairing with Isabelle Huppert (Time of the Wolf/The Piano Teacher).

Eric Lavallée

Published on January 10, 2012

#02. Love (Amour)

Director/Writer: Michael Haneke
Producers: X-Filme Creative Pool’s Stefan Arndt, Les Films du Losange’s Margaret Ménégoz, Veit Heiduschka, Wega Film’s Michael Katz
Distributor: Rights Available

The Gist: This centers on cultured octogenarians Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant) and Anne (Emmanuelle Riva), who are retired music teachers. Their daughter (Isabelle Huppert), also a musician, lives abroad with her family. One day, Anne suffers a minor stroke. When she leaves the hospital and returns home, she is paralysed down one side. The love that binds this old couple will really be put to the test…(more)

Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Emmanuelle Riva, William Shimell and Jean-Louis Trintignant

List Worthy Reasons…: We haven’t been this excited about senior citizen couplehood since Bergman’s Saraband. Not that we have any problems with the more extreme samples in his filmography, but we welcome this change of pace for Haneke. Kudos to the Austrian filmmaker for tackling a rarely addressed subject matter head-on and for employing octogenarian screen legends Emmanuelle Riva (Hiroshima Mon Amour) and Jean-Louis Trintignant (The Conformist). The film also happens to be a third pairing with Isabelle Huppert (Time of the Wolf/The Piano Teacher).

Release Date/Status?: Cannes red carpet photogs will have plenty of time to snap pics of the stars of Haneke’s film – this already has an assured Main Competition showing status and we expect outfitter SPC to grab the rights and place it in the awards contention fall season.

Related Topics:

Eric Lavallée

Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).