Haneke's Love

Somehow, I thought I was over suffering and the slow decline into death. Really. Thought that was all so 2009, the obssessive examination of all things decaying and dying.

Turns out old obssessions can still take. And when it's Haneke, it must be watched.

And it has Trintignant! And Emannuelle Riva! (And, incidentally, Isabelle Huppert).

Haneke cast French screen icon Jean-Louis Trintignant, 81, and Emmanuelle Riva, 85, in the story of George and Anne, a couple of retired music teachers, whose rich and adoring relationship is cruelly tested when she suffers a stroke.
Set in the hushed rooms of the couple's parquet-floored Parisian flat, the film charts Anne's physical and mental decline, and the increasingly unbearable strain it puts on George, who pledges to care for her at home until the end.
Utterly believable in the role, Riva told a press conference after the screening that she threw herself heart and soul into the part, sleeping in her dressing room at the studio where it was shot to remain immersed in her character.

[...]

"Once you reach a certain age, you necessarily have to face the suffering of the people you love," he told the press conference. "It's part of nature." "It raises the issue of how to manage the suffering of the people you love." Wheelchair-bound, half-paralysed, the intelligent, vivacious Anne early on tells her husband she does not wish to live such an impaired life. But carry on they do, as far as George can take her.

Now doesn't that sound just like something I'd like to watch?