Amour (2012)
Directed by Michael Haneke

Film Review

Even Michael Haneke's most committed admirers are likely to be taken by surprise with his latest film, an understated yet powerfully moving portrait of an elderly couple facing up to the grim realities of encroaching death.  Amour has the visceral brutality of the director's other recent films (La Pianiste (2001), Caché (2005)), but there is also a staggering humanity to the film. It is little wonder that it received the top prize (the Palme d'or) at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, the same award that Haneke had won for his previous film The White Ribbon (2009).  With harrowingly authentic performances from two of France's finest actors - Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva (Hiroshima mon amour, Thérèse Desqueyroux) - Amour is a film of extraordinary intensity and emotional power, possibly Haneke's greatest film, certainly his most intimate and humane.

Even in these enlightened times, growing old and dying in old age remain almost taboo subjects in cinema.  It is the future that none of us wants to face, can bear to imagine for ourselves - the slow, remorseless process of physical debilitation and stripping away of our faculties.  In tackling such a challenging subject, and doing so with an uncompromising, almost brutal realism, Haneke and his two lead actors show remarkable courage and commitment.  It is hard to know which is more difficult to watch: Anne's gradual mental and physical decline as her dementia takes hold and literally devours her, or her husband Georges's mounting distress as his wife, the most precious thing in his life, is slowly taken away from him.  Neither Anne nor Georges has the comfort of religious faith to fall back on.  Throughout their lives, music has been their religion, their one passport to the transcendent.  Now, adrift in a godless universe, they must face up to death on their own terms, the love they have for one another being their only support and consolation.

What is most distressing about the couple's plight is how they become increasingly withdrawn from the world around them.  Georges is determined to honour his pledge not to allow Anne to be consigned to a nursing home, but in doing so he cuts himself off from others who might have been able to share his burden.  Even the couple's daughter (Isabelle Huppert, impressive as ever in her third Haneke film) finds herself excluded from their personal ordeal.  We know how the story will end from the shocking flashforward at the start of the film, but still we are emotionally unprepared for the long and painful journey that Haneke takes us on, a journey that culminates in the most wrenching expression of love that a piece of cinema is capable of showing.  Amour featured prominently at the 2013 Césars ceremony, with nominations in no fewer than ten categories.  It won the top five awards, for Best Actress (Emmanuelle Riva), Best Actor (Jean-Louis Trintignant), Best Original Screenplay, Best Director and Best Film.

Film Synopsis

Georges and Anne are a happily married couple who are now in their eighties.  Retired piano teachers, they have a daughter who is also a musician, but she lives abroad with her own family.  One morning, the couple are having breakfast when Anne suffers a sudden stroke, which leaves her paralysed on one side.  With his wife now confined to a wheelchair, Georges takes on the burden of looking after her himself.  Then, one day, Anne confides in her husband that she no longer wants to go on living.  As Anne's condition further deteriorates, Georges finds it harder to give her the care she needs and ends up having to engage a nurse.  The strain of caring for his dying wife eventually becomes more than Georges can bear...