Amour

The majority of America will be watching TV tomorrow evening - myself included. It is Academy Awards season and for someone like me, who does not simply love film, but tends to be obsessed with film at times, the awards season is basically the icing on the cake. I spend all year long reading reviews of films, watching films, talking about films etc., it is nice to see who will get rewarded for they work. Even though there were often times, where I did not agree with the academy's decision, but that is another story.

The French-German-Austrian co-production "Amour" is up for five of those awards this year, including Best Actress for Emmanuelle Riva.  And knowing that director Michael Haneke does not make "light films", I had been wanting to see the film ever since I first read about it. Haneke is known for films such as: "Funny Games", "Caché", "The Piano Teacher", or his German entry for  Best Foreign Language Film three years ago: "The White Ribbon". 

"Amour" is the story of an eighty-plus-year old married couple who live a quiet, cultivated life. They are both retired piano teachers and enjoy the simplicity of being together. Anne, played by the phenomenal Emmanuelle Riva, suffers a stroke one day and her husband Georges, played by the equally talented Jean-Louis Trintignant, dedicates his entire life to being her caretaker. Anne's condition  digresses from bad to worse, when she suffers a second stroke. And the viewer can at this point only imagine how the story will end. The film is about saying goodbye, about the loss of a beloved person, but mainly it is about love. The love between two people that is so strong, yet so vulnerable that it will almost break their dignity. And there are actually times when it does just that. Isabelle Huppert plays the couple's daughter, who has been absent for many years but now, that her mother is dying, is trying to  reconnect with her. 

"Amour" is an incredibly sad film, I happen to be a quite sensitive person anyway, therefore I was shedding tears throughout almost the entire film. Nevertheless it is a sweet love story which I can highly recommend. I will keep my fingers crossed tomorrow night for 86-year old Emmanuelle Riva to win her first Academy Award.

Red Zora