Art House films to look forward to in 2012
Love
Director: Michael Haneke, ETA: autumn 2012- This is Michael Haneke’s first film since winning the 2009 Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for ‘The White Ribbon’. We’re told the story is about an elderly French couple, played by Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva (both of them in their eighties), whose relationship is severely strained when one of them suffers a stroke. Haneke’s regular collaborator Isabelle Huppert (‘Time of the Wolf’, ‘The Piano Teacher’) also features in the cast, playing the couple’s daughter, we believe. Haneke has spoken about wanting to explore the ageing process and its indignities, and we expect this to be at the heart of the film. The Austrian director shot the film in Paris at the beginning of 2011 and is believed to be taking his time with the edit to be ready to show it at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2012. It will mark Trintignant’s return to cinema after an absence of almost a decade.
The End
Director: Abbas Kiarostami, ETA: mid 2012
- In 2010, director Abbas Kiarostami delivered ‘Certified Copy’, his first film made outside his native Iran. The film combined a French lead actress (Juliette Binoche), English lead actor (William Shimell) and an Italian setting (Tuscany), and the final product felt like a celebration of all that’s great about European art cinema. His follow-up, ‘The End’, takes him east to Japan, for a film he has said will be a continuation of themes explored in ‘Certified Copy’. Details of the plot suggest it’s about a student (played by Aoi Miyazaki) who sells her body in order to pay for her studies, but her life changes when she instigates a relationship with an older scholar. Kiarostami has already made one film in dedication to Japanese master, Yazujiro Ozu (‘Five’), and on paper, this one sounds like it could be another one. According to reports, shooting started in November 2011, so Cannes 2012 looks like an outside possibility.
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