Riva's character, a former music teacher named Anne, has started to wear down, more in the physical sense but a bit in the mental department as well. In Amour, a bracing, brutal study of an octogenarian couple and the final snatch of time they have together, Trintignant plays a comparable role to that of Pinsent.
Julie Christie earned reams of awards for her portrayal of a woman suffering from Alzheimer's in 2006's Away from Her, yet for me, the best performance in that film was given by the largely overlooked Gordon Pinsent as her loving husband, a good man reacting to his wife's condition with a believable mix of empathy, kindness and helpless frustration. Clearly, Amour, Michael Haneke and Emmanuelle Riva don't really need me to additionally sing their praises (although praise is indeed what I have), so let's discuss Jean-Louis Trintignant for a moment. Its writer-director and lead actress each won or were nominated for over a dozen international awards. It nabbed the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and also scored four additional nominations (including Best Picture). It won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.