To whoever recommended the film "Amour" to me: Thanks and no thanks.
What a wrenching emotional workout! The film is superb in every way,
direction, acting, cinematography. To say the movie is depressing is
weak; I asked myself more than once, "Why do I continue
watching? I don't know how much more I can take."
The title is an apt description, for the movie is the love story of a cultivated and
sophisticated man and woman, both music teachers, who have been married
for many years and now have grown old together. We briefly see their
pleasant lives before, Anne (Emmanuelle Riva), the wife, suffers a
stroke. Even in the scenes before the tragedy, we sense with foreboding
that what follows will not be pleasant for either Anne or her husband
Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant.
The writer and director, Michael Haneke, unflinchingly and without
sentimentality, depicts the reality of life for the caregiver and the
cared-for after disabling tragedy strikes. Haneke does not fear scenes
of lingering silence, nor does he scorn blackouts, which go on longer
than the viewer expects. Except for the scenes at the beginning, the
movie is filmed entirely within the couple's apartment. The setting
does not feel unreasonably constrained, for Anne and Georges live their
lives within the constricted space, except for brief ventures out which
are mentioned but not shown.
Riva and Trintignant are brilliant
in their roles. Often without words, we read in their faces their
intense love for each other, the severe tests of the strength of that
love, and their shared humiliations. The actors, both in their 80s, have
not lost the golden touch.
Their daughter, Eva, (Isabelle
Huppert) cares about her parents, but she faces challenges in her own
life and, though somewhat perplexed, she seems to understand and perhaps
envy her parents' devotion to each other - that devotion which
effectively excludes intimacy with anyone else, even their own daughter.
The movie is brilliant in its every aspect, but it hit at least this
one viewer with a hard emotional punch that I would not want to repeat
every day.