In their eighties, Anne (Emmanuelle Riva) and Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant) live a comfortable life together in Paris. They were music teachers and they are still lovers of the piano and its music. This is Anne and Georges at the start of Amour, both captivating already. Then, Anne suffers a stroke and the film becomes a study of what happens next, as life inevitably unfolds. The relationship she shares with Georges is transformed and shaken, there is daily horror and indignity, difficult family relationships are exposed alongside reminders of past success.
Amour is a masterful film from director Michael Haneke, bleak but intensely emotional. There are moments which are frightening, especially that first attack, and Anne's continual decline is shockingly rapid. And though the film develops gradually, the pace is never slow. This is riveting cinema, and at its centre is the astounding acting of Riva and Trintignant. Meanwhile, dramatic impetus comes unobtrusively from the flash-forward of the opening scene – how did Anne's corpse come to be alone, undiscovered?
Haneke shows us human spirit as both resilient and fragile. The meaning of deepest love is first suggested to be, and then strongly tested as, a duty towards the person to whom we are attached and share our lives. Amour's uncompromising approach is underpinned by a fearless gaze at the response to a natural but unfathomable reality. The question at the root of the film is: what, in the end, does love entail? Instinctive protection perhaps, or an understanding of need. Haneke does not answer the question – in fact, I suspect he believes we can never know. We just have to wait; it is terrifying and wonderful.
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