USA Africa Dialogue Series - Étude on Aging, Its Graces, Its Indignities: Michael Haneke’s ‘Amour,’ With Jean-Louis Trintignant

http://sonyclassics.com/amour/

Roger Ebert: Good films are back in season

"...Now they are both old. She is 85. He is 81. They look it, are elegant and stately, and play Georges and Anne, a couple deeply in love after half a century. We see them first in the audience at a piano concert. Haneke frames the shot so somehow they're the two we notice in the middle of hundreds of others--by personal magnetism, perhaps? They return to their apartment, and we hardly leave it for the rest of the film, as she concerns him by slipping briefly into a trance late at the night, and again at breakfast. She has suffered a stroke, she loses control on one side, he appoints himself her care-giver, and when their daughter (Isabelle Huppert) asks what is to be expected, he replies calmly, "Things will go downhill, and then it'll all be over."-Roger Ebert.

'A masterpiece about life, death and everything in between, Michael Haneke's "Amour" takes a long, hard, tender look at an elderly French couple, Georges and Anne — played by two titans of French cinema, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva — in their final days. Set in contemporary Paris, it begins with the couple's front door being breached by a group of firemen...Did I mention this is a love story? It is, as well as a mystery of a type that, like some classic films noir and detective stories, reveals its secrets by rewinding to a past moment and then moving forward in time to return to the present. It opens with Georges and Anne, former music teachers, watching a concert by one of her prized students, the noted young pianist Alexandre Tharaud (as himself). Afterward they greet him backstage — Mr. Tharaud slices through a swarm of admirers to kiss her — and return home, an interlude set to his performance of Schubert's Impromptu (Op. 90, No. 1), a type of music that's called a character piece and is meant to convey a mood or idea. The music helps set an air of soothing, restrained elegance as does Mr. Haneke's meticulous compositions, his impeccable, steady framing and harmoniously arranged people and objects. Everything seems just so, just right, creating a sense of order that carries through until the couple reach their apartment and discover that the lock on their front door is broken. Someone apparently has tried to break in, a would-be intrusion that sends a shudder through the movie and down your spine. That's because it echoes the first image of the firemen bursting into the apartment and because you never know what shocks, what brutality, Mr. Haneke — whose films include "The White Ribbon" and "Caché" as well as the Austrian version of "Funny Games" and its American redo — will let loose."Manohla Dargis

Kenneth Duran:  Los Angeles Times:

 "Amour" is a devastating experience, the thrilling result of joining Haneke's icy, immaculate style (think "Funny Games" and "Cache") to an intrinsically emotional subject: what happens to the close, harmonious marriage of a couple in their 80s when the wife suffers a series of debilitating strokes. Shattering performances plus Haneke's severe style add up to a stunningly moving experience."--Kenneth Duran

http://movies.nytimes.com/2012/12/19/movies/michael-hanekes-amour-with-jean-louis-trintignant.html?_r=0

Film Summary 
AMOUR won Michael Haneke his second Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival this year. Haneke also received the prize for his last film, THE WHITE RIBBON. With AMOUR, Haneke gives us a masterpiece of compassion and tenderness told through the brilliant performances of two acting legends, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva. They play a married couple in their 80s whose long happy routine of life is sharply interrupted when a stroke causes one of them to gradually succumb to paralysis and dementia. The couple's reaction is to retreat from the world – to the point of not even allowing their daughter Eva (Isabelle Huppert) into their apartment. She ultimately has to force her way inside in order to find out what is going on with her parents. The film is fearless in the way in which it embraces the impending tragedy. Without cliché or cynicism, Haneke gives us permission to believe that unconditional love will endure after death.

"A tender, wrenching, impeccably directed story of love and death." (Manohla Dargis, New York Times)

Funmi Tofowomo 
--The art of living and impermanence. 

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