The collaboration between Austrian minister of fear auteur Michael Haneke and the beautiful, but aloof French doyenne Isabelle Huppert has been a fruitful one: it’s earned her a Best Actress award at Cannes (“The Piano Teacher”) and a Palme d’or for him (kidding, just cause Huppert was the jury head earlier this year doesn’t mean the slightly overrated “The White Ribbon” wasn’t deserving of the prestigious main prize.)
The duo have worked together successfully twice before; the aforementioned ‘Piano Teacher’ in 2001 and “Time Of The Wolf” in 2003.
Now a third collaboration is in the works and looks to be Haneke’s follow-up to his Palme d’Or-winning film. According to Allocine in France (via IonCinema), the picture is an untitled effort, but will mark the return of French acting icon, Jean-Louis Trintignant (known for his work in Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Conformist,” Claude Chabrol’s “Les Biches”and Costa Gavra’s 1969 political thriller “Z,” among many others), who is now 78-years-old, hasn’t acted since 2005 and only worked sporadically since the 1990s due to health issues (perhaps one of the more famous post-hey day performances was in Krzysztof Kieślowski’s final 1994 film, “Red”).
The untitled film is said to center on aging, but of course it’s Haneke the provocateur and it must punish the human condition in some manner, so it centers on the the “humiliation of the physical breakdown in the elderly.” Jesus christ, that sounds fun. You’ll have to make sure to take your aging parents and grandparents to that one as well. They’ll all surely have a gay old time.
IonCinema says there will be a “strong musical element” to the picture which begins shooting next year, though Allocine doesn’t mention any musical ties, Ion has been clocking this one longer than we have so we trust that they’re correct.
Maybe it’ll be a musical to make the unbearable elderly humiliation all the more excruciating and brutal? With Haneke you can never really tell.