Counting down to the EFAs | Amour

Country: Austria/France/Germany

Director and screenwriter: Michael Haneke

Starring: Emmanuelle Riva, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Isabelle Huppert

NOMINATED FOR: Best Film, Director, Screenwriter, Actor (Jean-Louis Trintignant), Actress (Emmanuelle Riva), Cinematographer (Darius Khondji)

If you're even remotely interested in film, then you must have heard that Austrian director Michael Haneke's Amour - winner of the coveted Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival, and nominated for a whopping six EFAs - is a piece of brilliant but crushingly depressing filmmaking.

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Well, I'm here to tell you that if that is what you in fact heard, then you have not been misinformed in the slightest. This relatively simple story of an elderly couple - the music teachers Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant) and Anne (Emmanuelle Riva) - whose bond of love undergoes the harshest test imaginable after Anne is left partially paralysed following a stroke, is merciless and unflinching.

These two adjectives are hardly new ways of describing Haneke's work, but whereas before they may have signalled sexual deviance (The Piano Teacher), senseless violence (Benny's Video) or a direct challenge to the audience's own morbid fascinations (Funny Games), here Haneke earnestly, and - dare I say it? - compassionately lingers on the couple's twilight days to evoke an empathy entirely devoid of clichés and sentimentality.

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Though he's certainly aided by excellent performances by Trintignant and Riva (veterans of the revolutionary French 'New Wave' of cinema of the 60s), what makes Haneke's film truly a work of towering, austere artistry is that he never once strays from the film's initial - and limiting - trajectory.

Allowing for 'intrusions' from the couple's less-than-sensitive daughter Eva (Isabelle Huppert), the layers of pain gradually unfold within the confines of the couple's apartment: a space made all the more jarring for being lovingly plied with books and paintings - a stark reminder of the fact that death is an ugly assault... no matter how carefully cultivated your cultural make-up may be.

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Whether Haneke's downer masterpiece is experienced as a celebration of enduring love under duress, or simply as a lament on human mortality, it remains a brave piece of filmmaking... even if it will end up commanding more respect than enjoyment.