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THE PALME DOR WENT TO MICHAEL Haneke's Amour, not only enabling him to join the exclusive club of double Palme winners - including Francis Ford Coppola, Bille August, Emir Kusturica, Shohei Imamura and the Dardenne brothers - but also making him the first to do so with consecutive movies, following The White Ribbon's success in 2009. The story of a Frenchman (Jean-Louis Trintignant) driven to despair when his wife (Emmanuelle Riva] suffers a debilitating stroke, the film was popular with critics, even if it does play on middle-class fears of ageing.

Haneke was in defiant mood when he premiered the film. "I never write a movie to prove anything," he said. "When you reach a certain age. you are inevitably going to be affected by suffering. I don't want to show anything more than that, there is no more to it. At the end of the day, I am very happy to have made a simple film."

AMOUR IS OUT ON NOVEMBER 16.