Review of Amour (2012) by Manny C — 26 Feb 2013

The title of course means love in French, and the film itself, the winner of the Best Foreign Language Feature award at the Oscars this year, defines love in every sense of the word. And never makes it an easy experience.

There's no wild sex, no drugs, nothing like that. It's just two people and the lifelong committment they have to one another, and they're now in their eighties. Georges (the inimitable Jean-Louis Tritignant) and Anne (the amazing Emmanuelle Riva) are retired music teachers living happily in Paris, receiving occassional visits from their daughter (Isabelle Huppert).

But then Anne has two strokes. Riva is stupendous, her agonizing journey of againg is etched upon her face. Austrian writer-director Michael Haneke (the maverick behind Funny Games, The Piano Teacher, Cache and The White Ribbon) delivers his most emotionally moving film yet, a film that creates a beautiful and sometimes harrowing sense of intimacy never before seen in his films.

The surprises of this film must not be revealed. His two leads, glamorous stars of French cinema (Riva, the beautiful star of Hiroshima Mon Amour and Tritignant, the amazing lead of classics The Conformist and A Man and a Woman) give powerhouse performances that are emotionallly draining and absolutely breathtaking.

It's a chamber drama that evokes the art house classics of Bergman and Dreyer and Haneke executes it marvelously. A new classic.