A very close old couple is confronted by the illness and physical decline of the wife.

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Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant) and Anne (Emmanuelle Riva) are two former music professors who have an excellent relationship. They enjoy their retirement in a Parisian apartment, a somewhat run-down but agreeable cocoon. One day Anne has a stroke and becomes paralyzed on her right side. Her devoted George does what he can to protect her and toughs it out in the face of her handicaps - Anne loses the power of speech after a second stroke but remains lucid. This will only get worse. How will he be able to keep his promise to Anne not to send her to a home?

This dark, difficult, true, tender, modest film that makes no concessions by Michael Haneke, noted for The White Ribbon and Funny Games, won him a second Golden Palm at Cannes. The Austrian director zooms in on the degeneration and humiliation that comes with old age and shows vividly what happens when we can no longer move, cook, go to the bathroom, wash, hold a fork or a glass or even string together an articulate sentence. The unwavering complicity of the couple to the last is moving; the gap (to the point of uncommunicativeness) between the vibrant world of their daughter (Isabelle Huppert) and the drastically shrunken universe of her parents is unmistakable.