Amour Review

Amour – my review. Seen on Air New Zealand – 12^th of April, 2013.

‘Love’ - "How to manage the suffering of someone you love?"

We don’t do dying well in the western world. We ignore it as much as possible, and when this doesn’t work the hidden emotions rupture into anger, grief and fear. There is this insane belief that it can be out ran. This examination unfolds in this sparse expose of love and loss.

The film opens in an affluent apartment. Police arrive and search rooms. They are covering the nose with the hand due to the smell.

They find an elderly woman in a large double bed. Her head on the pillow is surrounded by flowers.

We go back to the beginning. An elderly couple together on a night out. They appear quite restrained in manner. It is clear they know each other very well. They are visiting a classical music concert and return in the evening on a tram.

The next day they are seated at the breakfast table when the woman becomes non responsive to voice and stimuli. She is just staring into space. What is wrong?

This is the beginning of an unfolding nightmare.

Eventually medical intervention occurs in the form of an operation to rectify a carotid blockage, which fails.

Various visitors enter. They appear in an interview like situation. Two seated figures facing each other.

A former student, the daughter. A neighbour. The couple appeared isolated, they have each other. Without one there is a gaping void.

Devotion turns to desperation.

Even when the story of decline is known, people fight it all the way. The woman eats and drinks very little. She looks fiercely angry at being asked to eat and drink. She spits water out.

There is a scene where a nurse is cast out, sacked, who is quite belligerent, which is disturbing.

The director Michael Haneke  has been interviewed on the Movie Show and related a desire to keep the audience guessing, not knowing what each scene will bring.

All the scenes are in the apartment, with the exception of the concert scene. Which gives a somewhat claustrophobic atmosphere.

The husband ventures out to a funeral and talks about this as if the whole process was beneath him. The outwardly displays of affection and grief.

The daughter is shown as not accepting the choices of her parents and wants to have a ‘serious talk’ about it. But seems to avoid actually doing this. There is a forlorn hope for a different outcome, another opinion, a different scenario than the hopeless one that is before them.

The film highlights the modern world of separate lives. How have we done this? Is it to avoid seeing ‘unnecessary’ pain and suffering of others.

The mother expresses horror at anyone seeing her like this. The husband likewise tries to shield her. The daughter insists on seeing her mother but falls in a heap after she does this. There is a total non acceptance of seeing someone not whole, dying and fragile.

The film has been described as too unsentimental in its depiction of daily events. There is a willing ness to show all the frailties of the sick woman, her being fed, washed and toileted.

The ending is quite cryptic. The husband is settling his wife after her distress, she had been calling out, he was having a morning shave. He tells her a story about his childhood and then smothers her with a pillow. This does not seem premeditated. He just does it.

He then writes a letter while being diverted by a visiting pigeon who wanders into the apartment from time to time. Also by buying flowers.

He chooses to trap the pigeon under a blanket. Then as if to appease the viewer we hear his narration of the letter, that he lets the pigeon go. Is there a metaphor of letting go, as in setting his wife free. These scenes seems to open up this possibility.

In the end we see the daughter return and wander through rooms, in an empty house.

So empty. Questions arise about the husband, where has he flown?