Amour, a French-Austrian-German co-production, written and directed by Michael Haneke (White Ribbon), tells a tale of love tested during suffering.
Husband and wife Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant) and Anne (Emmanuelle Riva) are retired musicians in their eighties, long-married, settled, and live alone in a small Parisian apartment, sometimes visited by their daughter (Isabelle Huppert). One day, Anne suffers a stroke, and thus begins the couple's descent into a daily, hellish and escalating suffering, with Georges trying everything he could to ease his wife's pain.
This is my first orientation to a Haneke film. In Amour, the camera becomes a gaping observer of the characters-- most of the time just parked in one corner, openly staring and watching vigilantly like George does with his beloved, dying wife. The camera, like vulture eyes, is waiting for death. It's a painful film, tackling life's natural cruelty: the inevitable old age and death, and the monster that is the illness that silently creeps in and changes everything.
It's a lengthy film; tasks and movements captured almost in their full length until they become hypnotic. You also find yourself having memorized every corner of their apartment. The film immerses you in every rattled breath, shaky fingers, every agonizing cry, clumsy handwriting, every slurred speech, that you could almost smell Anne's imminent death, draining you from her long-standing suffering, and at the same time impressing you with Georges' quiet, patient, and intense love and devotion. Eighty-five-year-old Emmanuelle Riva, nominated in this year's Oscar for
Best Actress, delivers the kind of stunning, unforgettable performance that ingrains
in you.
Amour, nabbing 5 nominations in this year's Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Foreign Film, is a disturbing, horrific tale that might test some audiences' endurance because of its length-- but the length is essential so that you live and breathe the couple's daily exercise of pain and endurance, until the culmination of it all. Finish the movie.
4 out of 5 stars
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