Amour

Oscars watch: Valentine's day is coming this week, and I've now seen three of the ten films nominated for Best Picture (seven more to go!). And this third film happens to be a love story (as you can tell from the title).

I used to work in one of those island café’s in a shopping centre, where most of the customers were of the elderly. In the two years I worked there, I served some of the most delightful people. They were happy, wise and peaceful. Though, some of them relied on walking sticks, walking frames and scooters. Some of them needed me to pour water into their glasses for them, and unscrew the bottle tops of their soft drinks. Most of them ate with their husbands and wives. And then, one day, after weeks without seeing them, they solemnly ate alone. You can feel the heartbreak of their loss, as they sat alone, across from an empty chair. Micheal Haneke’s film, Amour, brought me back to these elderly people that I used to serve, who, from many of them, I felt, were content with the life they had built, much like the two main characters, Georges and Anne, a married couple in their eighties, who are played by Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva.

In the film’s opening scene, firemen break into an elegant French apartment. The men cover their noses and open the windows, and find the dead body of Anne in the master bedroom, lying peacefully on her side of the bed, surrounded by flower petals. Then, in the next scene, a shot of a theatre audience, which is shot from the stage, as audience members seat themselves and wait for the concert pianist to take the stage. Georges and Anne are seated in the audience – this is how their journey to the end begins. The next day, Georges and Anne are having breakfast. Suddenly, Anne appears frozen, like she’s staring into space, and unfazed by her husband, who places a wet towel to her face and is trying to communicate with her, with no response. But once Georges leaves the room, Anne breaks out of her trance and resumes her breakfast. Georges is baffled, as his wife doesn’t recall being unresponsive. They learn that Anne had a stroke, which has left one side of her body paralysed. George is now Anne’s carer, who is confined to a wheelchair and incapable of clothing, bathing and cooking for herself. Whilst Georges is patiently tending to his wife, Anne is struggling to cope with her condition, and fears of completely losing her independence.

As I watch this film, I get the same feeling I get every time I see an elderly couple going for a walk in the park, holding hands and looking relaxed. Although, Amour isn’t a feel-good film, it is certainly a romantic one. The way Georges selflessly nurtures his wife, as Anne stubbornly reassures him that she doesn’t need constant care, is beautiful. Anne is indeed stubborn, but you can understand her. You can imagine that losing the ability to care for yourself and others would be frustrating and humiliating.

For most of the film, we are stuck in the apartment, the world that Georges and Anne are alone in, with the exemption of a few visitors, which include their daughter, Eva (Isabelle Huppert), and Anne’s former student, Alexandre (Alexandre Tharaud), whose concert they attended earlier in the film, and whose visit seems melancholic – there’s a scene where Georges plays Alexandre’s CD, and Anne instructs him to turn it off, like it’s painful to listen to, a passion she can no longer re-ignite. Georges and Anne’s home, an well-designed apartment with a classic Parisian feel, is itself like a third main character, and it gives us so much insight into the lives of Georges and Anne, particularly the beautiful grand piano and the endless shelves of books in the large study room. Though spacious, clean and open, the home is an enclosure for the elderly couple, as the closed doors keeps their secrets hidden. Even their daughter Eva is occasionally locked out of their world.

What I really like about this film, like any genuinely good film, are the fine visual details. I mentioned closed doors, the doors are certainly thematic throughout the film, as the film opens with the locked doors being busted open, and the film ending with all the doors in the apartment open, allowing the home to breathe in new life. The doors surely represent the secrets and opportunities, the entrances and exits, which this old couple faces in the closing chapter of their long journey. Indeed, this is what this film is, the final chapter, we are witnessing the final chapter of Georges and Anne. But director, Michael Haneke, gives us the ending before giving us that last journey. The film beginning with the discovery of Anne’s body suppresses the inevitability of the story, and rather creates a curiosity of how this woman died and why was she left like that.

I’ll admit, I don’t know much about Michael Haneke, but I do know that he knows how to move the camera. Haneke uses a lot of long shots and medium shots, which gives us the feeling that we’re observing, looking into the lives of these people. And Haneke establishes that with that shot of the audience at the concert, ensuring us that we are the watching audience.

This is certainly a good, bitter-sweet film, which won the Palme d’Or at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. Both Trintignant and Riva are fantastic and endearing in this film, with Riva earning a Best Actress nomination at this year’s Academy Awards. Riva starred in one of the most influential films, Hiroshima, mon amour, back in 1959, which I haven’t seen, but I’m certainly going to have a look at it.