AMOUR (2012) - ♦♦♦♦

Directed by - Michael Haneke

Written by - Michael Haneke

Starring - Jean-Louis Trintignant, Emanuelle Riva, Isabelle Huppert

"The bond of love of a married couple in their eighties is severely tested when the wife suffers an attack.

Most films dealing with love and romance deal with it in quite a fictional and surrealistic sense. Furthermore, a lot of them always gravitate around the beginning of a romance instead of depicting the harshness of romantic longevity. Which is why Michael Haneke's Amour is so splendidly unique.

Amour is heartwarming, but equally restrained as the story of a much older couple suddenly faced with life's impending fragility and the concept of mortality.

Haneke's skilled photography and carefully studied art direction make the setting of the flat as important as the characters in the film, played with great experience and taste by Trintignant and Riva. The focus on the flat, where virtually all the action takes place, also adds a direct type of power to the film, the likes that can be found in the theatre more than in cinema. Together with the feeling of disarming honesty, the film also remains gripping and switches fromheart warming to heart wrenching in a most intense way."

Drama, France/Germany/Austria