Learning German From Michael Haneke
Sautéed chicken breasts over fascism, from the director of The White Ribbon
He also admits to a severe case of nerves on the night of The White Ribbon’s victory at Cannes, where his films had been lauded many times before but never with the coveted Palme. Even then, there were some naysayers who supposed that the fix was in, given that Huppert (who won a Cannes prize for her Piano Teacher performance) was the president of the competition jury. “I was very happy that, after the ceremony, the members of the jury came to me and said, ‘We agreed from the minute we saw the film that this would have the Palme,’ ” he says with the pride of the concert pianist who has finally made it to the stage of Carnegie Hall. “This was a relief for me.”
Next, Haneke will turn his attention from the very young to the very old in a film about the indignity of aging, which will reunite him with Huppert and will also star 79-year-old French film icon Jean-Louis Trintignant, who hasn’t played a leading role in more than a decade. “It’s a depressing theme, and I don’t know how much people will want to see it,” says Haneke, whose own aunt, with whom he was very close, committed suicide at 93, “because she had suffered enough. She was very clear in the head, but her body was falling apart. She didn’t want to go into a home for old people. So, it’s a theme that has interested me for a long time.”
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And with that, Haneke sends me on my way, complete with a plate of leftovers.
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