Amour

The fact that Amour is an instant classic in the art-house world is as indisputable as the emotions presented by the protagonists of the film are bewildering. This picture is Haneke's minimalistic yet mightily expressive homage to love as we know it, showing the feeling's overpowering force and heartfelt, altruistic nature. While remaining a thoroughly unsentimental and provocative picture, Amour delivers a most-demanding portrayal of an elderly couple's last days together. Those cultivated, sophisticated characters need to evaluate their long-lasting marriage and come to terms with their own emotions, and, simultaneously, discover the true meaning of love in itself. Decisions need to be made, and some of them might be shocking to say the least.

It's a beautiful but considerable piece of filmmaking, where a sombre atmosphere and touching yet disturbing imagery permeate every scene. Haneke's steady and visionary directorial hand promises many moving and heartbreaking sequences, while still providing a poetic exemplification of a well- lived life's concluding moments. It's impossible to find neither a plausible sense of redemption nor an authentic touch of consolation, no. The film displays a marvelous character-driven narrative, where loving individuals diverge from the seemingly familiar path and start arguing with their own opinions and ideals, leading to some truly perplexing choices. In the most unexpected manner Amour touches the controversial topic of euthanasia, emphatically depicting how difficult it might seem to even consider such a harsh decision.

Amour is a tender, scrupulous, demanding, two-hour visualization of a romance well beyond boundaries, and through its difficult notions it shows human existence in its most intimate and most elegiac state. That death seems inevitable from the very first minutes is certain, but the way Haneke chooses in order to finally arrive at this intensely upsetting conclusion is an uneasy one. Amour is definitely a cinematic powerhouse, which will leave the audiences in a most pensive, quiet - even downcast - mood, still astounding with its ubiquitous beauty.

This film is about an elderly female music teacher and her husband, whose life gets torn apart by her stroke.

"Amour" is a powerful portrayal of two individuals coping with vascular dementia. We see Mrs Laurent transforming from the graceful lady to a person completely unrecognisable at the end. The husband loves her and cares for her patiently and demanding nothing in return. It is the ultimate love that people long for. The performances of them are superb, especially Mrs Laurent. I was so surprised and impressed that she could even play lower facial nerve palsy (speaking only with one side of the mouth).

It is a superb film, with amazing performances and an unnerving story. However, I could not get into the film. Maybe it is because of the barren nature of the film. The minimalistic nature of the sets and soundtracks echoes the fading of Mrs Laurent. Or maybe it is just too raw and too threatening to think that this could be our future, that my unconscious mind rejects the content of the film.

The retired piano players and teachers Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant) and Anne (Emmanuelle Riva) live in a comfortable apartment in Paris. Their daughter Eva (Isabelle Huppert) is a musician in tour through Europe. One day, Anne has a stroke that paralyzes her right side, and Georges nurses his wife and promises that he will send her neither to a hospital nor to a nursing home. Soon Anne's life deteriorates and her mental and physical capabilities decline very fast leading Georges to take a tragic decision.

"Amour" is a depressing movie about the end of a journey of a retired couple of about eighty and something years old. "Amour" has impressive performances of Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant and is developed in very slow pace, almost theatrically, and is sad to see the elder wife losing her dignity due to her physical and mental problems. I recall Emmanuelle Riva very young in movies like "Hiroshima, mon amour" or "Léon Morin, prêtre" and Jean-Louis Trintignant in the unforgettable "Un homme et une femme" or "Et Dieu... créa la femme" and seeing them now seniors make me think how short life is and made me sad. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Amor" ("Love")

I thought I was going to be deeply affected by "Amour," based on my experience with Michael Haneke's "The White Ribbon" and the film's premise. My wife and I just recently watched her father degenerate physically and mentally over the last few years until his recent death, so the closeness to me of the subject matter combined with Haneke's uncompromising approach to filmmaking made me feel sure that I would be deeply disturbed by his film.

And while I was watching it, I felt like I should be feeling that way, but never really did. It's by any definition a formidable piece of filmmaking, but it left me cold. The events depicted in the film count among my worst nightmares and are even more terrifying for the significant likelihood that I will have to experience them in some fashion. But I never forgot that I was watching actors performing in a movie. There's something about Haneke's style that's cold and clinical, and the same quality that can make his movies deeply disturbing can also make them inaccessible.

To be honest, I'm kind of glad Haneke's style kept me at an emotional distance from the film, because I think it might otherwise have been unendurable.

Grade: A-

Amour (2012) Dir. Michael Haneke

Just when I thought Michael Haneke could surprise me no more, he comes along with a film like this. A film for which the jury at Cannes gave him his 2nd Palme d'Or in four years. And nothing less than this film deserves.

The story of an elderly French couple, their deteriorating health and devotion to each other is the basis, and allows the Austrian auteur to inject something rarely if ever seen in any of his films to date, heart.

Some of the typical Haneke touches are still there; the suffocating sense that something terrible is going to happen being his signature. His previous film, the 2008 Palme d'Or winning The White Ribbon keeps up this omnipresent dread for almost its entire runtime (also see the deus ex machina in Funny Games and continuous sense of dread in Cache). With these films Haneke has proved himself to be the biggest audience manipulator since the greatest of them all, Alfred Hitchcock.

But there's nothing artificially manipulative in Amour. And there's none of the sentimentality that less able directors would fall back on given the film's subject matter. The acting and characterisation is so strong that added sentiment is never needed, and is in fact the very last thing you'd expect to encounter in a Haneke picture.

The emotion felt towards the two protagonists as they struggle with coming to the end of their lives actually gave me a crushing sensation in my chest by the end of the runtime. This is an extremely tough film to watch at times, and on more than one occasion I had to look away from the screen.

The biggest compliment I can give this film, is that it made me want to call my parents.

5/5 stars. #1 film of the year so far.