by Allan Fish
(France 2012 127m) DVD1/2
Aka. Love
Playing Beethoven’s Bagatelle
p Margaret Ménégoz d/w Michael Haneke ph Darius Khondji ed Monika Willi, Nadine Muse art Jean-Vincent Puzos, Suzanne Haneke
Jean-Louis Trintignant (Georges), Emmanuelle Riva (Anne), Isabelle Huppert (Eva), Alexandre Tharaud (Alexandre), William Shimell (Geoff), Ramon Agirre (concierge),
It was not going to be easy viewing. Amour isn’t easy viewing for anyone, but as I type I have a dear loved one suffering from the onset of dementia. I’ve also lived with suicide in my time, for a period it was my good companion. But despite my empathy on many levels watching it could never be as hard as making it was for Haneke, who himself had lost a loved one to suicide.
After the discovery of a body in an apartment laid out on a bed as if for a funeral, we are then taken back a little period, only a few months or so, to an evening concert at the Théâtre Champes Elysées. An elderly couple take their seat in the fourth row and then join the applause as the pianist comes on stage behind the camera. We see them meeting the pianist afterwards and then going home. He takes a nightcap. They go to bed. We next see them round the breakfast table the next morning. They’re talking when all of a sudden the wife, Anne, literally stops, as if in a trance. Nothing her husband Georges can do can snap her out of it. Then when he’s about to go for help, she snaps out of it and refuses to believe anything had happened. (more…)
Click on names for archives
Writers/Founders
