Amour (2012)

AMOUR is one of those films that grabs you by the throat and doesn't let go. The plot is straightforward: an elderly man looks after his wife after a stroke and finds that he just cannot cope. Director Michael Haneke constructs the film as a character-study of old age; looking at how people of that vintage think in a different way, as opposed to their offspring. Anne (Emmanuelle Riva) decides at the end of her life to check out; her husband (Jean-Louis Tritingnant, in a memorable performance) tries in vain to keep her alive. For anyone who had had the experience of being a carer, the film has painful resonances. Director Michael Haneke's filming is just brilliant; the use of long takes, wordless sequences (in which the only sounds we hear are the creak of floorboards, or the flapping of bird-wings) sums up the elderly couple's lives. The film won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival; it is easily the best I've seen in 2012.

note: Emmanuelle Riva was nominated for the Oscar shortly after I wrote this review. She is the female lead, pictured, and as a young woman was the lead in HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR, a foreign film classic.

I can't say this depressed me. However, I must warn you that this may happen to a viewer. This is not an easy film to watch. It involves a married couple in old age. She has a stroke which is very disabling. She lives at home with him and he tries to handle it. But she keeps getting worse. This movie is about the end for them. They are a couple who have been in love their whole lives. They had a complete life together. They have a grown daughter. You see early pictures of them and they were beautiful. Plus we know they are talented and affluent. All of that makes no difference when old age and last illnesses set in. It is a long spiral down and as the husband says to the daughter,"it is very bad, it will only get worse and then it will be over." that is the film.

I have been through this with various family members who lived into their eighties and nineties and then got strokes and alzheimer's. watching this is hell. but his love for her is complete as she begins and progresses along the descent.

I frankly found it very engrossing and the acting is out of this world. These do not even seem like actors it is so life like.

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"Amour" opens with the police discovery of the decomposed body of an elderly French woman in her bed, surrounded by flower petals. We then get a brief flashback to the life of a cultured, sophisticated French couple, enjoying their golden years an evening at a concert, stimulating conversation before she suffers a stroke.

When Anne (Emmanuelle Riva) returns home from the hospital, wheelchair-bound but mentally intact, she makes her husband, Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant), promise to never send her back. She says there is no reason to go on living in her current state, and she does not want to be a burden on Georges. His attentiveness and solicitousness, while necessary, rankle her. A second stroke leaves Anne in much worse shape, both physically and mentally. His vow to her leaves him almost as trapped as she is, while she sinks deeper into depression and despair over her body's betrayal.

Viewers, particularly those who have experienced the heartbreak of caretaking for a loved one, will have reactions just as disparate as those expressed by the couple's family, friends, and caretakers. Some will feel admiration for a husband's unwavering dedication to his wife. Others will feel frustration at his refusal to break a promise that has caused his life to be condemned to one in which he must stand by and watch as his wife deteriorates and slowly dies. Everyone will pity the formerly vibrant woman who makes clear that she does not want to live in her bed-ridden, helpless condition, no longer able to communicate.

There's not a moment of levity in "Amour." But there are two exceptional performances by Riva and Trintignant in a film that takes place almost entirely in the confines of their apartment. This couple's experience is unfortunately not uncommon, but that does not make it any less devastating to watch.

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After recently losing my husband from dementia and Parkinson, I wasn't sure I could see this movie without too much pain and grief. But I LOVED it as it told my story (except for a couple of scenes that did not happen in my life) and helped me to heal my fear that I hadn't been strong enough or done enough for my love. For people that watch this movie, be prepared to watch a true depiction of life as a caregiver for someone you deeply love and learn what a terminal illness is really like. The writers of this film, the actors and the director deserve so much praise and appreciation for telling a story that many can relate to. Watching "true love" be demonstrated at it's most difficult point in a relationship in the form of compassion, understanding, patience and even exhaustion was so real I was taken back to my own situation with my husband. If honesty, insight and learning are what you love in a movie, then this is the one. I highly recommend.

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I had a very distinct experience at the theater while watching Michael Haneke's Amour. While primarily focused on the film itself, I was also paying attention to the body language of the audience. Very early on, almost immediately after the title card sits across a blank screen, there is a shot of Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant) and Anne (Emmanuelle Riva) waiting for a recital to begin. The way Haneke is able to bring us toward these two, even in a frame of much activity, will not be surprising to anyone who has seen a certain other film of his. But what was so eerie about this scene this time around was how it set such a tone for the story to come, how it announced from the outset that it wasn't here to hold our hand. In the theater I could hear coughing and shuffling, whispering and grumbling, and that was simultaneously what I was hearing on screen as well. Already the bodies in the crowd were stirring, perhaps wondering where the music was that would guide them emotionally through this couple's twilight. Or just hoping that the next scene or the one after that would show Georges and Anne jaunting around a scenic Paris street in a rainstorm, laughing and looking on the bright side. But that never, ever comes in this film. It employs a sort of desolate quietude early on, and it only gets quieter. More stirring ensues around me, some people looking at each other for cues that Haneke refuses to give them. Refuses at every turn.

Prepare yourself for that. We do not see this kind of restraint in modern films. We also don't see this kind of willingness to venture into the tunnel of mortality. You'd have to go back to Bergman's Cries and Whispers for a true counterpart, and even then Amour is something more distilled. To be sure, a common complaint you will hear about the film is that it has a thousand pounds of ice in its veins, that it is removed or distant. Such a charge is often leveled at Haneke for his other films as well. But, in this case, I think the style fits the substance like a glove. For illness, whether caretaker or sufferer, carries with it a fog, a depression of spirit. I don't think it's a spoiler to inform the reader that you will spend the entire duration inside the apartment of Anne and Georges. You will watch the dull light barely come through, you will find it difficult to distinguish days from nights, you will see a dying woman's bedside accumulate all the sterile supplies of a hospital room. And you will concurrently watch her husband wilt under the sadness and futility of it all. There will be no epiphanies that let you coast out on a wave of false hope. That has little to do with Haneke's cinematic style, and everything to do with the fact that life is temporary. Love, a part of that process, cannot be separated from death.

So why recommend the film? Because about eighty percent of people spend all of their free time disengaging. They avoid all things unhappy or undesirable in the belief that this improves upon their own immediate contentedness. I don't necessarily fault them for the impulse, but, as time passes, I think more and more that it clips their antennae to the human experience. Distraction is fine, but why would we want to live in a constant state of it? This film is not just for those looking to extract its complex symbolism in a classroom. It is for everybody, as it gets down to the very marrow of what happens to all of us. It is beautiful in its depiction of faithfulness, dismissive of made-short attention spans, and lives with you long after the lights come up. Please tell your friends to give it a chance when they say they don't watch "that depressing stuff." Tell them that leaving is always depressing, but we all must. There is catharsis in that.

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