THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THURSDAY, FEBURARY 14, 2013
PAGE 7A
REVIEW
'Amour' will break your heart
CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
CENTRIBUTED PHOTO
Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant) must care for his ailing wife Anne (Emmanuelle Riva) in Michael Haneke's "Amour," which won the Palme d'Or at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival.
"Amour" is a celebration of life waltzing lockstep with the encroachment of death, the kind of movie meant to break your heart and enrich your soul simultaneously. Michael Haneke's newest film, winner of the 2012 Palme d'Or, is a merciless, unflinching glimpse into the void, a romance that ends with the grim assertion that even a lifelong love must end as a kind of horror story.
Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant) and Anne (Emmanuelle Riva) are retired music teachers, cultured and independent, determined to live out their remaining years in the bohemian comfort of their Parisian apartment. We first find them seated in the cavernous depths of a concert hall, listening to one of Anne's former students give a piano concerto to a sold-out crowd. That night they return home to find scratch marks on their door, signs of an apparent forced entry. The next morning, during breakfast, the intruder announces itself when Anne suffers a mild stroke while in mid-conversation with Georges. Her vacant, almost serene expression while her husband frantically tries to revive her will haunt me for a very long time.
In a matter of weeks, Anne is paralyzed on the right side of her body and her mind, once sharp and full of vigor, begins to deteriorate at a frightening rate. Georges, determined to honor his wife's
wish not to be hospitalized, elects to act as her primary caregiver, despite the concerns of the couple's grown daughter (Isabelle Huppert). The rest of the movie chronicles the final miserable months of Anne's infirmity, the indignities of which are depicted in harsh, graphic detail.
The demands "Amour" makes on its audience would be almost too much to bear if it weren't for the extraordinary commitment of Trintignant and Riva, both staples of the French New Wave who were lured back from semi-retirement by Haneke, who apparently had the two in mind while he was writing the script.
Riva, the radiant ex-starlet whose early career peaked with 1959's "Hiroshima, Mon Amour," gives one of the most natural, heart-rending performances I've ever seen as Anne, nailing every facet of this proud, vibrant woman's gradual decent into oblivion. In an ideal world, the Best Actress Oscar would be hers. Trintignant, who achieved international acclaim with 1966's "A Man and a Woman," matches his co-star
blow for blow as the loyal, belea- guered Georges, tormented by the thought that his wife now considers herself a burden.
Haneke, the foreboding Austrian auteur best known for his interminable long takes and chilly morality tales like "Funny Games" and "The White Ribbon," seems an unlikely candidate for crafting a compassionate meditation on the ravages of old age until you consider how easily a story like "Amour" could have dissolved into a manipulative, ham-fisted exploitation piece. The director, to his infinite credit, is not capable of such sentiment, preferring instead to focus on two recurrent themes from his previous films: the decline of reason and the limits of devotion.
Watching "Amour" can be a difficult, emotionally draining experience, especially because nearly all of us have experienced, or will experience, something similar to what Georges and Anne are going through. Yet despite its universally tragic subject matter, or more than likely because of it, "Amour" represents Haneke's most humane, accessible work to date, a film that deserves to be seen and celebrated as one of the past year's few genuine masterpieces.
SUDOKU
Edited by Megan Hinman
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Difficulty Level ★★★
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SUDOKU
Difficulty Level ★★★★
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ALEX AND ANI
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