Jean-Louis Trintignant

Emmanuelle Riva

Isabelle Huppert

Alexandre Tharaud

William Shimell

Ramon Agirre

Rita Blanco

Carole Franck

Dinara Drukarova

Laurent Capelluto

Jean-Michel Monroc

Suzanne Schmidt

Damien Jouillerot

Walid Afkir

Michael Haneke

Rodin Alper Bingol

Uwe Schott

Darius Khondji

Nadine Muse

Monika Willi

Kris Portier de Bellair

Jean-Vincent Puzos

Thierry Poulet

Sophie Reynaud

Catherine Leterrier

Guillaume Castagné

Thi-Loan Nguyen

Ulli Neumann

Alain Olivieri

Colomba Falcucci

Caroline Duris

Isabelle Thévenet

Manuela Stehr

Thierry Baucheron

Mohan Valmy

Jörg Widmer

Stefan Arndt

Veit Heiduschka

Michael Katz

Pascal Chauvin

Jean-Pierre Laforce

Guillaume Sciama

Margaret Ménégoz

Drama

Romance

Amour

Les Films du Losange

X Filme Creative Pool

Wega Film

France 3 Cinéma

ARD Degeto

France

Germany

Austria

English

Français

daughter

nurse

music teacher

married couple

piano lessons

aging

love

retired

illness

pigeon

stroke

octogenarian

Andres Gomez

Superb drama about the final stage of the life of a middle-high class couple in France when one of them gets disabled due to a stroke.

Bothe actors perform exceptionally.

CinemaSerf

At a time when the whole concept of “assisted dying” is being scrutinised in the British Parliament, it’s a poignant time to watch this heartfelt drama that follows the decline of the elderly “Anne” (Emmanuelle Riva). She is a retired piano teacher who has been married to “Georges” (Jean-Louis Trintignant) for most of her life and with whom she shares a daughter in “Eve” (Isabelle Huppert). It’s at breakfast one morning that he notices something slightly amiss. She thinks it’s nothing but has soon suffered a debilitating stroke. She has partial movement and is still fairly compos mentis and so the pair promise to continue as best they can, but when she suffers a further attack and is rendered bedridden the pressure on her husband becomes enormous. With their daughter living with her family in the UK, there is only limited support she can offer and at times her frustrations cause friction with her father who is increasingly at his wits end. A nurse is hired, but can that ever be anything better than a stop-gap measure as the inevitable looms large but unpredictably on the horizon? It’s essentially a two-hander and is a very powerful depiction of just how people deal with grief while their loved one is still alive! Promises made must be kept but cannot be; tensions arise that can have no alleviation, love grows and yet dies at the same time. It’s an emotionally charged and thought provoking drama that serves as a timely reminder that so often dignity and individuality are sacrificed at an altar of generality that fails to appreciate that every such scenario is different and that legally defined one-size-fits-all solutions are not always those that really satisfy anyone. Both actors here play their roles with a palpable degree of sensitivity and even though she is inactive for much of it, Riva manages to convey through her facial expressions much of her own character’s exasperation as life’s chemistry replaces it’s quality. It’s not an easy film to watch, nor does it present us with anything other than the solution which “Georges” feels is the most humane. Some will agree, others will not - but that’s a debate that films like this can do much to advance.

Amour( 2012)

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A review by Andres Gomez

Written by Andres Gomez on Mon Oct 06 2014

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