Amour

How is it love at the end when death is coming?

Georges (Jean Louis Trintignant) and Anne (Emmanuelle Riva) are two French octogenarians, a couple of retired piano teachers. One day Anne is the victim of a stroke. After being released from the hospital, she comes back home but once there she’s suddenly paralyzed on one side which condemns her to stay in her Parisian apartment. Nevertheless she can rely on the presence and the love of her husband to face the disease. The presence of their helpless and despicable daughter, Eva who lives abroad (Isabelle Huppert) and even the presence of the nurse is soon repelled. Anne and Georges only want to suffer together.

If oldness is a wreck, as the French President De Gaulle once said, Amour is a deep ship’s log. Love and death confront and then join together in a moving marriage. It’s an immense movie which elates the viewer. The Austrian filmmaker Heneke introduces us to a very emotional movie where the charming humor makes us smile, his tragic story makes us cry and the loving couple makes us adore them.

The quality of the acting is an essential key to this movie’s achievement. Jean Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva form a charming and believable couple in this drama and the viewer shares the tragedy with them.

The story looks like a haiku film which would contain three words: love, accident, and ordeal. This masterpiece orchestrated by Heneke was awarded the Palme D’or at the 2012 Cannes film festival and after having seen the movie, the viewer sees that this prize is worth it. We adore, we cry, we laugh, we just want to see it again and again.

Priscillia Mudiaki