Film Review: Amour
Michael Haneke’s Palme d’Or winner is a hauntingly beautiful exploration of love, aging, and mortality.
Amour is an unflinching examination of the end-of-life challenges. The film tells the story of Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant) and Anne (Emmanuelle Riva), an elderly couple whose lives are forever altered when Anne suffers a stroke that paralyzes one side of her body. The film takes place almost entirely within their Paris apartment, a setting that mirrors the claustrophobic and inescapable nature of their situation.
Haneke’s direction is precise and restrained, opting for long takes that allow us to fully immerse ourselves in the couple’s world. There’s a sense of realism that makes the film so devastating and it forces us to confront the brevity of time and the inevitable frailty of the human condition.
Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva deliver heart-wrenching performances that are authentic and breathtaking. The film is not just a story of illness but also a meditation on the dignity (and the lack of it), that comes with aging. It raises difficult questions about autonomy, suffering, and the limits of compassion.
Amour is not an easy watch, and it certainly won’t appeal to everyone. Haneke has crafted a film that challenges us to consider what it truly means to love someone until the very end. Having won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, it later went on to win an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
