By N
I went alone to watch this movie and in front of me sat two girls, who clearly didn’t know what the movie was about. They probably thought that a movie in French with a title such as ‘Amour’ could only be a good old chick flick à la française. Well, judging from the noise they were making during the movie and their decomposed faces at the end, I guessed they were a bit disappointed.
So many things have been said about ‘Amour’ but one cannot deny the impressive piece of work that is this movie. The whole story is based in only one place: their flat. We are part of those walls and we see time passing and life ending through well filmed moments of long pauses, music playing, storytelling and supper. One might think that Haneke is here imprisoning us but I felt that worked very well in his ‘mise en scene’. All these elements are brilliantly placed into scenes and are not over or badly used. You intrude into this old couple’s intimacy, like a voyeur, and see what is happening in the flat – sometimes you even feel uncomfortable and tense with what you’re watching but it’s never too much or vulgar. All throughout the movie, people pass judgement (the protagonist’s daughter, the concierge, the nurse) on how Georges takes decisions to face his wife’s suffering. The more the movie progresses, the more you realise that he loves her but not to the point of giving her what she wants. He tries hard to reduce the humiliation and pain, and finally he has this impulse of blind love which helps him to stop her agony. Haneke shows us love with different faces: Georges who all throughout the movie wants her to get better, to fight and refuses to let her go because he loves her and Anne who’s trying hard at first to be joyful, to do her exercises, to eat for him (because she loves him) even if that is not what she wants.
One of the best things about this movie is undeniably the cast: Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant, are breathtaking in their precision. Isabelle Huppert plays their daughter and sees what happens from outside as she visits her parents only once in a while. She is beautiful, as always. The movie deserves all the awards for that trio.
As you may have guessed already: yes, I definitely recommend this movie.
cucurbitacee 