Amour
Michael Haneke watches an elderly Parisian couple face the slow dissolution that comes with age and refuses to look away or offer comfort even when you desperately want him to.
What it is about
An elderly couple's life in their Paris apartment changes after one of them suffers a stroke.
Love without an easy answer
Emmanuelle Riva plays Anne across a deterioration that has no arc of recovery and no cinematic mercy. She commits to every stage of it without softening what it looks like and without performing suffering. It is the most physically demanding performance of her career and she was 85.
Haneke shoots almost entirely inside the apartment and never lets you forget that the walls of this beautiful flat are closing in. His refusal to use music or sentimentality is not coldness. It is the most honest thing a director can do with this material.
The film is called Amour and Haneke means it. Georges does everything for Anne because love at this depth does not permit the alternative. What the film asks you to sit with is whether that level of devotion and that level of suffering can exist in the same act.