AMOUR (PG-13) Actress Bette Davis famously once said, "Old age is no place for sissies." Neither is watching Michael Haneke's Amour. An elderly Parisian couple, George (Jean-Louis Trintignant) and Anne (Emmanuelle Riva), deal with the hardships of aging, illness and the inevitability of death. Anne has a stroke. Her condition worsens and George tries to care for her the best that he can, but he's physically and emotionally overwhelmed. She loses the ability to communicate, and he is forced to cope with the reality of her situation.

Firefighters and the couple's daughter, Eva (Isabelle Huppert), discover Anne's corpse in the first scene, so there's no false suspense generated by Haneke to keep the movie involving. Haneke is interested in simplicity, stripping the narrative down to dramatic essentials and then observing his actors inhabit the space of the frame and in their interactions with realism and honesty. That's the intent at least. In the past, at his worst, Haneke's stealthy objective distancing effects can feel manipulative and sadistic. At his best, he is cold and punishing, dealing out a strict moral with the finesse of an obsessed taskmaster. 

In Amour, however, the severity of his lesson is tempered with a surprising compassion, though one not sugarcoated with sentimentality or melodrama. The long takes, use of naturalistic sounds and sparse use of music (usually only heard by us if a character is actually listening or playing music) help draw us closer to George and Anne's story with as little fuss as possible. Trintignant is a legend of European cinema, and this late role is dignified and haunting. Riva, who first came to the attention of world cinema lovers in 1959 with Hiroshima Mon Amour, gives a subtle, sublime and shattering performance here.

Television shows like "The Walking Dead" or "Boardwalk Empire" routinely show characters chopping, hacking and blowing away zombies and vicious rivals for our amusement. Fictional graphic carnage is no longer relegated to hard R or unrated gore movies; now millions of viewers enjoy it every day of the week in their living rooms. Ironically, filmmakers are shy of examining death in a realistic fashion, let alone aging. Haneke does both here, and the result is one of the finest movies of 2012, and it should rank alongside Make Way for Tomorrow and Tokyo Story as another profoundly poignant movie about aging. Amour is not a depressing experience, but it is quietly devastating.