Love conquers Cannes

Austrian film wins Palme d’or.

CANNES:

Cannes crowned Love by Austria’s Michael Haneke, the wrenching tale of a man and his dying wife, with its Palme d’Or prize on Sunday as Europe swept the awards at the world cinema’s top showcase. Haneke’s octogenarian actors, French screen icon Jean-Louis Trintignant, 81 and Emmanuelle Riva, 85, bowled Cannes over in the story of Georges and Anne, an adoring couple whose bond is tested after the wife suffers a stroke.

His second Palme in three years, the win confirmed Haneke’s status as arguably the most important film director working in Europe. Haneke took the Palme d’Or three years ago for a very different work, The White Ribbon, a black-and-white study of malice in a German village on the eve of World War I, which some saw as a parable on the roots of Nazi savagery.

Hailed as a “masterpiece” by critics, the French-language Love marked a journey into tender new territory for a director better known for exposing the icy secrets of the soul. Haneke’s sombre camera chronicles the intimate details of Anne’s physical and mental decline, as Georges fulfils a pledge to care for her at home until the end.

Both actors came on stage at the star-studded gala in the Riviera city to accept the award with Haneke, who dedicated it to his wife of 30 years. “This film is an illustration of the promise we made to each other, if either one of us finds ourselves in the situation that is described in the film,” the 70-year-old director told the audience. Speaking for the rest of the jury, the designer Jean Paul Gaultier said Riva and Trintignant had delivered “the greatest emotion of all the movies we saw”.

The festival, however, was thrown on the defensive by protests over the absence of women directors in this year’s line-up, prompting its veteran chairman Gilles Jacob to say organisers would look harder next year for female talent. 

Published in The Express Tribune, May 29^th, 2012.