Michael Haneke has abandoned his previously announced project exploring old age and will instead opt to shoot a new film about the Internet later this year.
The abandoned project was tentatively titled “Ces Deux,” roughly translated to “these two,” and cheerfully explored ideas of “humiliation and the physical deterioration of the aged” (surely this one is a picture you’d like to take your mom and dad to).
French icon Jean-Louis Trintignant was set to return to acting after a five-year hiatus along with usual Haneke muse Isabelle Huppert in tow for a planned summer shoot in France. That was, of course, until Haneke pulled the plug after reportedly seeing a Canadian film exploring similar ideas (could it have been Sarah Polley’s “Away From Her ,” about Alzheimer’s starring Julie Christie? Or it could even be “The Barbarian Invasions” which also deals with the elderly amongst its larger milieu).
Instead, the Austrian auteur will now develop a new screenplay that is being currently being written and due for completion in September. Little is known about it though other than that it’ll be “about the Internet” and will feature a worldwide shoot including Japan and the U.S.. Sounds like Haneke will take his exploration of the human condition on a global scale possibly in a “Babel”-esque manner. Hopefully it’s not like Atom Egoyan’s “Adoration,” which deals with similar online subject matter, but doesn’t quite cut it on any level.
Production is set to begin in September as well so news should trickle in before then. We hope he finds a way to still weave Huppert and Trintigant into this new picture. Haneke’s latest is the austere, pre-WWI picture, “The White Ribbon” which most likely will win the Foreign Film Oscar award come March.