Amour (Jean-Louis Trintignant, Emmanuelle Riva) – I should have known that I was not in for a fun night when the opening credits of Amour appear over a black screen with no music and no visual images. The first scene we see is the police breaking into a nice, clean, sparse apartment. Flash back. Amour is a character study of an elderly retired couple who live comfortably in an upscale Paris apartment. Cultured and articulate, Georges and Anne do the mundane things most seniors do – a lot of reading, eating modest meals, washing dishes, and listening to music. No TV in this household but they do attend the occasional concert. One morning, Anne goes blank in the middle of breakfast with Georges. Georges is perplexed and concerned. A few minutes later, she seems back to normal, picking up the conversation in which they were previously engaged. But now, she can’t pour the coffee. The couple’s life is never the same.
This is one depress-o-fest. The downward spiral of Anne’s life is accompanied with the amazing, dutiful dedication of her husband. Georges’’ devotion wears on him as well but it is a labor of love (amour) that he accepts in a stoic, almost disconnected way. But he is anything but disconnected.
Essentially, Amour is three-act play that takes place on a single set inside the apartment. How does the writer/director, Michael Haneke, deal with the limitations of such a small set? Ponderously. Haltingly. Deliberately. Haneke is a German who has written and directed films in multiple languages. Imbd.com describes (among) his “trademarks” as using “long, static takes, no film score, cuts to black between scenes and using character names of George/George/Georges and Anna/Ann/ Anne.” Bingo. I have often rationalized slow-moving scenes as a deliberate artistic method to drag the audience into the dilemma of the characters. The first director I remember using this method was Sydney Pollack in his nine-time Oscar nominated film They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? Haneke takes it to a new level in Amour. The movie is slow; really slow. The scenes are uncomfortably elongated. Haneke has a disturbing (or is it artistic?) tendency to focus the camera away from the action (the orchestra, the speaking character, etc.). I swear an early scene of an audience gathering must be on screen for a minute or two before we ever find out what is about to happen on stage. It is his way of introducing us to our two characters. But it signals the cumbersome pace of the film we are about to see.
That 85-year-old Emmanuelle Riva earned her Oscar nomination with her incredible and daring performance as Anne is unquestionable. She moves from healthy former piano teacher to confident stroke victim to invalid in two hours. “There but for the grace of God, go I.” Jean-Louis Trintignant (82), as Georges, is equally phenomenal in a layered, subdued performance. He walks haltingly, awakes startled from a bad dream, and has a little trouble getting to his feet but never wavers from the promise he makes to his wife to care for her and never put her in the hospital.
The movie tackles an uncomfortable topic that few films have. In that sense, it is an important film without being an enjoyable experience. It is a worthy nominee for Best Foreign Film. As a Best Picture nominee, it