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Director Michael Haneke took the best foreign film Oscar last Sunday.

Michael Haneke's Oscar-winning Amour hits raw emotions

Michael Haneke's 'Amour' touched a universal chord and earned Oscar honours with its moving portrayal of ageing and mortality, writes James Mottram

There isn't a more amazing story in cinemas this year than . From winning at Cannes to gate-crashing the Oscars, Michael Haneke's elegant yet harrowing study of ageing and illness has defied conventional wisdom at every turn. In a business where youth is pandered to and old age ignored, this tale of a devoted Parisian couple facing their mortality would seem like box-office poison. Instead, it's turned into one of the toasts of the season, already grossing US$17 million at the global box office.

When it premiered in Cannes last May, it took the top prize, making Haneke just one of seven directors to win the Palme d'Or twice (he won in 2009 for ). It swept the European Film Awards this winter, winning best director, film, and actor and actress, for its stars Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva. It was the best foreign-language film at the Golden Globes, and best film not in the English language at the Baftas, with Riva named best actress at the latter, beating the American favourites, Jessica Chastain and Jennifer Lawrence.

Most surprising, however, is its showing at the Oscars - with 's award for best foreign-language film and four other nominations making for a genuine triumph. Usually confined to the best foreign-language film category (which previously was nominated for, but did not win), non-English-language films rarely break into the main arena at the event organised and overseen by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. With this film though, Haneke was nominated for best director (unlike Ben Affleck for ) and best screenplay (ditto Paul Thomas Anderson for ), and Riva became the oldest best actress nominee ever, turning 86 on the day of the ceremony itself.

At 70, the austere Austrian-raised Haneke is pragmatic when it comes to all this praise. A former philosophy and psychology student, who went from writing film criticism to working in TV and theatre, he has seen it all before. "If you win a prize, it's very flattering," he explains. "But more importantly, it improves the working conditions on your next film. It requires a certain courage to agree to produce the films that I make, and prizes lend courage."

That's certainly true. From the confrontational films he made about media violence ( , ) to the abrasive study of a masochist in (2001) and the gloomily apocalyptic (2003), Haneke's films are anything but easy on the eye or nervous system. is different, however, with its story of two former music teachers, Georges (Trintignant) and Anne (Riva). When she suffers a stroke, he must care for her as she begins a painful and inexorable slide towards death.

Arguably Haneke's most accessible film to date, this doubtless accounts for why members of the Academy and others have taken to it. But what of Haneke: has he softened since turning 70? "You have to ask my wife," he grunts in reply. Does he see it as tender? He shakes his head. "You're always looking for an approach that's suited to the theme you're dealing with. And it's true that here, when you're dealing with love, the form is going to be different - than, for example, in , which isn't about the same subject."

Riva, who came to prominence in Alain Resnais' 1959 anti-war classic , has her own take on what Haneke has achieved. "The more I see it - and I've seen it twice - I think it brings something to each of us," she says, a red woollen blanket wrapped around her shoulders to keep her warm. "Because we live all together in this world, no matter the age differences, no matter where we all stand in our lives. We have something in common to share and that is destiny, our destiny."

At 86, Emmanuelle Riva is the oldest best actress Oscar nominee, for Amour in which she plays a dying woman. Photos: AP, MCT
The silver-haired Riva is full of enthusiasm for Haneke's work. "If you decide to watch this movie, you have to watch it really. You have to let yourself be hit by it. To me, it's a bit like a documentary in the best sense of the word and its strength comes from the fact that it's a very sober film. It's a simple film." Using as a comparison, while that dealt with impossible love, "this film deals with a very possible love; so possible, in fact, that it goes until the end".

Love may be present, but it's not the only emotion on screen. Anger, confusion, heartbreak … rarely has the indignity of dying been so frankly essayed on screen. "I hope this film made me stronger, that it left traces in me, because I'm now in the last part of my life," notes Riva. "I'm not saying that I won't be afraid of death when it comes. I'm not saying this film has made me so strong that I'll feel easy or serene when death comes. It didn't give me any answers."

While Haneke visited hospitals, spoke to doctors and attended therapy sessions during his research, his desire to write on the topic of old age and illness stemmed from something much closer to home. "I experienced a carbon-copy situation in my family," he says. "Someone who I loved very deeply was suffering terribly, and I had to look on helplessly."

While death has often haunted his work - think of the horrific murders in , the shocking suicide in 2005's - what we see here is less extreme, more commonplace. Watching a loved one die an agonising death is one of the most appalling things that so many of us have to face, he says. "For me the ideal of death is the death of my wife's grandmother. She was 95. She was sitting at a table, surrounded by 20 friends. At one point she said, 'I feel tired' and laid her head on the table and died."

Nevertheless, Haneke is reluctant to present his film as a polemic. It is not, for example, a cry for euthanasia to be more widely accepted in society. "It wasn't my intention to deal with that question," he states, briskly. Nor is the subject of his film just why Western societies, in particular, find it increasingly difficult to deal with illness - and why "everything that doesn't represent success, anything that's not productive, doesn't create wealth", as Haneke puts it, is pushed to the sidelines.

Yet the director concedes these are issues that emerge from watching , even if the primary objective is to show us a story about the often horrifying nature of unconditional love. "It's the same with old people. You don't see much of them in daily life and very few families live together. They're all split up," he says.

"But my film doesn't try to change that. It would be impossible for it to change that. It's something that all you can do is reflect on and try to be aware of." After watching , it'll be just one of many things you're left to dwell on.

Amour

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Emotionsin the raw
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